<
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/19/fans-of-open-access-unite-you-have-nothing-to-lose-but-your-chained-libraries/>
"When books were rare and extremely expensive, they were often chained to the
bookcase to prevent people walking off with them, in what were known as
“chained libraries”. Copyright serves a similar purpose today, even though,
thanks to the miracle of perfect, zero-cost digital copies, it is possible
simultaneously to take an ebook home and yet leave the original behind. For a
quarter of a century, the open access movement has been fighting to break those
virtual chains for academic works, and to allow anyone freely to read and make
copies of the knowledge contained in online virtual libraries.
The detailed history of the movement can be found in Chapter 3 of
Walled
Culture the book (free digital versions available). As the timeline there, and
posts on this blog both make clear, the open access movement has made only
limited progress despite the enormous effort expended by many dedicated
individuals. Moreover the open access idea has been embraced and then subverted
by the academic publishers whose greed and selfishness it was meant to fight.
One version of open access, known as the “diamond” variant, still offers hope
that the goals of free access to knowledge for everyone could still be
achieved. But even this minimalist approach to academic publishing requires
funding, which raises questions about its long-term sustainability. Economic
issues also lie at the heart of wider discussions about what could replace
copyright, which was born in the analogue world, and whose dysfunctional nature
in the digital environment is evident every day."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
