Stealing from you and me in the name of profit
PubScience has been shut down.
I am so furious about this I have trouble finding the words. FOS however, says it pretty well:
SIIA [who led the lobbying campaign to shut down PubScience] spokesman David LeDuc said...as paraphrased by Matthews, "it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free." (PS: Let's get this breathtaking assertion straight. When the research is funded by the government and the articles donated by authors, then taxpaying readers should have to pay a second levy to read them, and pay it to a third party with no role in the research? The cost of a running a government web site is a greater burden on taxpayers than the cost of paying profiteers standing between authors and readers?)
Does everyone have it straight now? Write ups of public research done with public funds are not available to you and me--the public--because someone stole them from the public domain. They stole it right out from under us and then had the unmitigated gall to say, 'well, the government shouldn't pay for that.' That's exactly what the government should pay for! That's one of the important reasons why it's here! To make knowledge available to all, equally. To promote the spread of knowledge and wisdom. To provide for the public good. Not for private profit. Private profit has to take care of itself. The public good is why we have a country at all.
Public good. Public good. Public good. Say it three times and it's yours. We have a right to say that some things are held in common for all of us. We. The People. It's why we're here.