The whole point of the internet

Once upon a time there was this quaint notion that academic research, specifically, but general human knowledge by extension, would be greatly accelerated if the individual costs of sharing information were reduced almost to zero. Inevitably this ran up against the equally quaint notion that you can make billions of dollars creating artificial and unnecessary bottlenecks in the process.

The University of California decided it doesn’t want scientific knowledge locked behind paywalls, and thinks the cost of academic publishing has gotten out of control.

Elsevier owns around 3,000 academic journals, and its articles account for some 18 percent of all the world’s research output. “They’re a monopolist, and they act like a monopolist,” says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, head of the campus libraries at UC Berkeley and co-chair of the team that negotiated with the publisher. Elsevier makes huge profits on its journals, earning its parent company RELX billions of dollars a year. 

This is a story about more than subscription fees. It’s about how a private industry has come to dominate the institutions of science, and how librarians, academics, and even pirates are trying to regain control.

Which one of these notions defines the actual point of the internet for you depends on how favorable you are to the advancement and liberation of humanity vs.. you know.. capitalism.