guerillaaccessmanifesto
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+ | ====== Guerilla Open Access Manifesto ====== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for | ||
+ | themselves. The world' | ||
+ | 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. | ||
+ | |||
+ | 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. But | ||
+ | even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. | ||
+ | Everything up until now will have been lost. | ||
+ | |||
+ | That is too high a price to pay. 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," | ||
+ | make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — | ||
+ | there' | ||
+ | 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. And you have: trading passwords | ||
+ | with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been | ||
+ | sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by | ||
+ | the publishers and sharing them with your friends. | ||
+ | |||
+ | But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or | ||
+ | piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a | ||
+ | ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only | ||
+ | those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Large corporations, | ||
+ | require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they | ||
+ | have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who | ||
+ | can make copies. | ||
+ | |||
+ | There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the | ||
+ | grand tradition of civil disobedience, | ||
+ | culture. | ||
+ | |||
+ | We need to take information, | ||
+ | the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need | ||
+ | to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific | ||
+ | journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open | ||
+ | Access. | ||
+ | |||
+ | With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the | ||
+ | privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us? | ||
+ | |||
+ | Aaron Swartz | ||
+ | |||
+ | July 2008, Eremo, Italy |
guerillaaccessmanifesto.txt · Last modified: 2015/04/16 00:28 by 808