From Aaron Swartz’s Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto:

“Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal—there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources—students, librarians, scientists—you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not—indeed, morally, you cannot—keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Your post must include a link to this post.

How does this work?
Write a response on your own website and include a link to this post. Then submit your response’s URL here. Your response may appear here after moderation. To update or remove it, edit or delete your original post and submit the same URL again. Learn more about Webmentions.