Wholeheartedly agree. Simply asking permission implies whoever you're asking has more business determining whether you have the right to do something than you do. It also implies you expect them to offer an opinion. People who don't know what's going on say "no" in such situations. The result is everything gets bogged down and no work gets done.
A much better way to go is to use the "front page test." If your picture is plastered on the front page of the newspaper along with an explanation of what you did, are you sorry (this is not the same as asking if someone disapproves)? In the case at hand, your project should not be jeopardized if a bonehead among us doesn't get that info they make freely available on the open Web might actually be used... kyle On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Notess, Mark H <mnot...@iu.edu> wrote: > They are public: https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A1=ind1206&L=CODE4LIB > > Have at it. > > While I fully support ethical research and even IRBs, we do everyone a > disservice by appealing to IRBs to approve things that don't require their > approval, even if we're just doing so to be "careful." It reminds me of > the disservice we libraries sometimes do by asking for permission to use > things when we could instead make a fair use argument. > > Best, > > Mark >
