Free as in...

[j4]

Another email at work:

Can I download the BNC for free if I don't want the DVD versions? The DVD is expensive since I'm just a full-time student.

You've got to wonder if he's tried that line with Amazon...

Comments

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of objects in the sciences (for example, all the data NASA has ever collected, and every genome sequenced at the Sanger Centre) for which the DVD is provided, if at all, at a cost designed to deal with the faff of getting a grad student to stop reading Facebook waiting for their gel to electrophorose writing their thesis and burn a DVD, and if you'd rather download the data you're welcome to it.

If you're coming to linguistics from say bioinformatics, it does seem a little odd that a major underlying database has licensing conditions and costs money. Yes, it cost money to assemble, but the Hubble telescope and the Human Genome Project cost a whole lot more.

I suppose I can imagine myself asking exactly the same question, though maybe not quite phrased the same way, so it doesn't strike me as intrinsically ridiculous.