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1. Science Must Push Copyright Aside {#science-must-push-copyright-aside .chapter}
====================================
> Many points that lead to a conclusion that software freedom must be
> universal often apply to other forms of expressive works, albeit in
> different ways. This essay concerns the application of principles
> related to software freedom to the area of literature. Generally, such
> issues are orthogonal to software freedom, but we include essays like
> this here since many people interested in Free Software want to know
> more about how the principles can be applied to areas other than
> software.
@firstcopyingnotice{{ Copyright © 2001, 2012 Richard Stallman\
{This essay was first published in Nature magazine’s Web Debates forum,
on 8 June 2001. This version is part of @fsfsthreecite} It should be a
truism that the scientific literature exists to disseminate scientific
knowledge, and that scientific journals exist to facilitate the process.
It therefore follows that rules for use of the scientific literature
should be designed to help achieve that goal.
The rules we have now, known as copyright, were established in the age
of the printing press, an inherently centralized method of
mass-production copying. In a print environment, copyright on journal
articles restricted only journal publishers—requiring them to obtain
permission to publish an article—and would-be plagiarists. It helped
journals to operate and disseminate knowledge, without interfering with
the useful work of scientists or students, either as writers or readers
of articles. These rules fit that system well.
The modern technology for scientific publishing, however, is the World
Wide Web. What rules would best ensure the maximum dissemination of
scientific articles, and knowledge, on the web? Articles should be
distributed in nonproprietary formats, with open access for all. And
everyone should have the right to “mirror” articles—that is, to
republish them verbatim with proper attribution.
These rules should apply to past as well as future articles, when they
are distributed in electronic form. But there is no crucial need to
change the present copyright system as it applies to paper publication
of journals because the problem is not in that domain.
Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone agrees with the truisms that
began this article. Many journal publishers appear to believe that the
purpose of scientific literature is to enable them to publish journals
so as to collect subscriptions from scientists and students. Such
thinking is known as “confusion of the means with the ends.”
Their approach has been to restrict access even to read the scientific
literature to those who can and will pay for it. They use copyright law,
which is still in force despite its inappropriateness for computer
networks, as an excuse to stop scientists from choosing new rules.
For the sake of scientific cooperation and humanity’s future, we must
reject that approach at its root—not merely the obstructive systems that
have been instituted, but the mistaken priorities that inspired them.
Journal publishers sometimes claim that online access requires expensive
high-powered server machines, and that they must charge access fees to
pay for these servers. This “problem” is a consequence of its own
“solution.” Give everyone the freedom to mirror, and libraries around
the world will set up mirror sites to meet the demand. This
decentralized solution will reduce network bandwidth needs and provide
faster access, all the while protecting the scholarly record against
accidental loss.
Publishers also argue that paying the editors requires charging for
access. Let us accept the assumption that editors must be paid; this
tail need not wag the dog. The cost of editing for a typical paper is
between 1 percent and 3 percent of the cost of funding the research to
produce it. Such a small percentage of the cost can hardly justify
obstructing the use of the results.
Instead, the cost of editing could be recovered, for example, through
page charges to the authors, who can pass these on to the research
sponsors. The sponsors should not mind, given that they currently pay
for publication in a more cumbersome way, through overhead fees for the
university library’s subscription to the journal. By changing the
economic model to charge editing costs to the research sponsors, we can
eliminate the apparent need to restrict access. The occasional author
who is not affiliated with an institution or company, and who has no
research sponsor, could be exempted from page charges, with costs levied
on institution-based authors.
Another justification for access fees to online publications is to fund
conversion of the print archives of a journal into online form. That
work needs to be done, but we should seek alternative ways of funding it
that do not involve obstructing access to the result. The work itself
will not be any more difficult, or cost any more. It is self-defeating
to digitize the archives and waste the results by restricting access.
The US Constitution says that copyright exists “to promote the Progress
of Science.” When copyright impedes the progress of science, science
must push copyright out of the way.
### Later Developments {#later-developments .subheading}
Some universities—MIT for instance[(1)](#FOOT1)—have adopted policies to
thwart the journal publishers’ power. Stronger policies are needed,
however, as ones like MIT’s permit individual authors to “opt out”
(i.e., cave in).
The US government has imposed a requirement known as “public access” on
some funded research. This requires publication within a certain period
in a site that allows anyone to view the article. This requirement is a
positive step, but inadequate because it does not include freedom to
redistribute the article.
Curiously, the concept of “open access” in the 2002 Budapest Open Access
Initiative did include freedom to redistribute. I signed that
declaration, despite my distaste for the word “open,” because the
substance of the position was right.
However, the word “open” had the last laugh: influential campaigners for
“open access” subsequently dropped freedom to redistribute from their
goals. I stand by the position of the BOAI,[(2)](#FOOT2) but now that
“open access” means something else, I refer to it as “redistributable
publication” or “free-to-mirror publication.”
<div class="footnote">
------------------------------------------------------------------------
### Footnotes
### [(1)](#DOCF1)
@raggedright “MIT Faculty Open Access Policy,” adopted by unanimous
faculty vote on 18 March 2009,
[http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/\
open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/](http://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/%3Cbr%3Eopen-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/).
@end raggedright
### [(2)](#DOCF2)
@raggedright See <http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/> for the
BOAI guidelines. @end raggedright
</div>
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