Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

[\0xDynamite]

I abide with the spirit of Aaron Swartz, but he wasn't perfect.  I
believe, philosophically, that knowledge should be the heritage of
mankind, but practically there must be protective mechanisms to ensure
that the knowledge is vouchsafed.

> Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to
> keep it for
> themselves.

This is where he's wrongheaded.  People do tend to keep power to
themselves, but they don't tend to keep knowledge to themselves unless
they, themselves, made it.  What people are doing holding *access* to
knowledge (generally through subscriptions) is trying to monetize
knowledge, which is not the same struggle of power.

>The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage,
> published over centuries
> in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up
> by a handful of
> private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most
> famous results of the
> sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed
> Elsevier.

Probably not.  Much of the best science was published centuries ago
and is available freely with just a little effort to go to the
library.  There is hardly any real knowledge that is kept from
mankind, except business or national politics.

> There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has
> fought
> valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away
> but instead ensure
> their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone
> to access it.

This is where the internet hasn't quite solved the problem with
replacing publishers.  In truth, the problem is solved by myself and
others who have developed voting models to create a meritocracy of
information publishing, but it is not widely applied.

> That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to
> read the work of their
> colleagues?

This is generally handled by the administration of their university.
There is no cost to academics.

I don't want to ridicule Aaron in any way.  I think RSS is an awesome
contribution to the internet.

But despite every liberty-loving individual`s desire for freedom, I've
had to acknowledge that the power to create the personal computer
(which has fostered access to all of this knowledge) came from
individuals seeking to profit for themselves.  It required
corporations, law, money, and self-interest.

I hardly believe I'm saying it, but the only conclusion is:
Self-interest isn't necessarily bad.

Marxos