Re: Why charge?

Russell A. Potter (rpklc@uriacc.uri.edu)
Fri, 28 Mar 1997 00:22:46 -0500

An afterthought to my last posting: well, it will be objected, are you
arguing that all scholarly journals ought to be free? That university
presses ought to just donate them to folks who can't afford them?

No, I'm not. But this is -- was -- the difference with the internet's own
textual resources. Freed from the cost of paper, ink, and binding, and of
postage, journals were relatively cheap to produce. This leap to low-cost
mass dissemination inspired all kinds of heraldings of new "Gutenberg"
galaxies to come. PMC's loose, 'freely-shared-among individuals' defintion
of fair use seemed to me one harbinger of such a shift. Now, reined back
in by the larger capitalization of the 'net, PMC is different only in one
regard, which is that it ain't printed on paper. Some revolution.

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