My Take | Nothing wrong with sharing knowledge, no matter how obscure
Someone is selling academic theses on the internet, seemingly without permission. But if it helps increase the pool of ideas and experience out there, why not?
Graduation theses tend to pile up in dusty corners of university libraries. No one ever reads them other than your adviser and those unfortunate souls who have to examine you. Well, maybe not even all of them. How do you know they read it?
But the university says it’s copyright infringement. Some titles are quite interesting. There is an education thesis by former Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, examining how mathematical concepts can be taught by definitions and examples.
HKU graduates who are affected are reportedly angry. The university has approached the online bookstores to ask them to stop the sales. But at least one online bookstore has told HKU only the authors themselves can lodge a complaint and have their works withdrawn from sale. I can’t imagine too many of them would bother. If I were one of them, I would welcome the opportunity of potentially being read by more than five people in the world.