If you don't feel doomed, spend a moment to reflect on the immense wealth of information available to the common man today against the average level of intelligence of the population, and you'll get there pretty soon.
1. If you can freely answer in this venue, do you consider steep paywalls to be ethical (your own ethical standards count in this case)? Why or why not?
Paywalls are absolutely ethical. If a person does a job, they should be able to choose what value to attach to that job. However, competition or regulation should exist in some form to avoid monopoly of content.
Supply and demand of scientific information is a niche market, one typically created for and consumed by only the academic elite. Niche markets usually attract premiums which larger markets that survive on volume don't require. The biggest issue is that technology, especially that relating to the location and transmission of information across large distances, has grown exponentially within recent history.
Increasingly, those who profit from buying and monopolizing information are finding their business model is eroding within an era where free flow of information is near universal. The evolution of the market requires a rapid shift to adapt to current trends, lest their business model becomes obsolete. This has been most visible among the music and film industries, where market demands and developing technology have created new ways for consumers to access content on demand for relatively reasonable prices.
2. If you have considered alternatives to a steep paywall for academic content, which do you like best?
Where exclusive rights are the norm for information, limitations on duration of exclusivity should be key to combating loss of access. Public domain access after a limited duration of exclusive distribution offers publishers time to gather remuneration whilst still offering the general public access to content. Five to ten years from date of publication is typically well within the range of most generally accepted "current" research, and universal access to academic content older than this date would promote healthy uptake among those not practicing at the cutting edge of research.
3. If you have a favorite alternative, is it also the one you consider the most viable for the long-term proliferation and propagation of widely and practically applied scientific information and understanding? Why or why not?
Public access to academic material after an appropriate exclusivity period is a viable option for propagation of information, as it maintains incentive for content creators and publishers alike to push the boundaries of knowledge whilst still allowing universal access to all interested parties no matter their financial status.
4. If you have any more time, what do you think about piracy of paywalled content? Is it a force that will eventually make the world a better place? A worse place?
At its core, piracy of content is one form of competition, a rebellion against what is perceived as an imbalanced relationship between service and price.
A great analogy is that of patented drugs. These medications are owned by a company that bought the rights to distribute this creation, perhaps from an independent academic who created this as part of their own field of research but sold the rights to distribute the creation to a different company.
The cost of manufacturing and distributing this creation is actually quite small. Yet, the company serves its own interests and that of its shareholders when picking a price based, not on the cost of the creation, but upon the maximum price they believe prevailing market for this creation will reasonably pay.
Now let's introduce a theoretical magic box that almost all people who use this drug might have in their home or workplace. This box manufactures stuff, and if you wanted, you could even use your magic box to create this drug. But the law says it's wrong to do so, because that's owned by the company that bought the exclusive rights to charge money for creating this drug.
If the price of the drug was reasonable, most people wouldn't break the law. If it's unreasonably high, many would consider doing so, especially if the consequences were quite low even if they're caught.
The same principle applies to companies who profit from transmitting information. They've paid for the right to offer this creation to other people, and there's laws that say, even though you could do the same thing yourself for free, you're not allowed to. Whether people respect the law depends on whether the price is worthy or respect or contempt.
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Topic: Impending Doom Thread (Read 7966 times)