Wendy Grossman, Can we? May we? Will we?The Inquirer, April 30, 2004. The title questions refer to the prospect that we will digitize all human knowledge, store it online forever, and make it openly accessible. Grossman sketches the vision of Brewster Kahle. Excerpt: "One reason I'm not [willing to pay for copyright permissions] is philosophical: I believe that archiving open access to our cultural history is important. The kind of fine-grained charging this idea would represent is, I believe, destructive. Creators are net consumers of intellectual property. If you drive research costs through the roof, few will be able to afford to create anything new --and those who are will be funded by large media companies. It will be impossible to survive as an independent."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/01/2004 10:06:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
