Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

Information is power. But as all power, there is those who want-keep it for 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 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 is those struggling to change this. The Open Access movement have fought valiantly to ensure that scientists does not sign their copyrights away but instead Ensu Re their work was published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work would only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now would have been lost. That's too high. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks on Google to read them?Providing scientific articles to those for elite universities in the first world, but not to children in the Global South? It ' s outrageous and unacceptable. "I agree," many say, "but how can we do?" The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it ' s perfectly legal- There ' s nothing we can does to stop them. " But there are something we can, something that's already being done:we can fight back. Those with access to these resources-students, librarians, Scientists-you has been given a privilege. The Banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world are locked out. But you need not-indeed, morally, you cannot-keep this privilege for yourselves. You had a duty to share it with the world. And you have:trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who has been locked out is 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 any of this action goes 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 mur Dering its crew. But sharing isn ' t immoral-it ' s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse-let-a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, is blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require It-their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they has bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make co Pies. There is no justice in following unjust laws.  It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare we opposition to this private Theft of public culture. We need to take information, wherever it's stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff That's out of the 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. Would you join us?  Aaron Swartz July, Eremo, Italy

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto