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    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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    H1dR0GeN0
    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

    Uploaded by

    H1dR0GeN0
    17 views2 pages
    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    17 views2 pages

    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

    Uploaded by

    H1dR0GeN0
    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

    Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it fo
    r
    themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over
    centuries
    in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handfu
    l 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 instea
    d 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 r
    ead 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, the
    y
    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, somethin
    g 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 o
    f 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 pa
    sswords
    with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.

    Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have bee
    n
    sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information lock
    ed 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 stea
    ling or
    piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plunder
    ing a
    ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral it's a moral imperative. On
    ly
    those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

    Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they o
    perate
    require it
    their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians t
    hey
    have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decid
    e who
    can make copies.
    There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light a
    nd, in the
    grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private th
    eft of public
    culture.
    We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share th
    em with
    the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archi
    ve. 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 opposi
    ng the
    privatization of knowledge
    we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
    Aaron Swartz
    July 2008, Eremo, Italy

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