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	# 2022-03-25 - Guerilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz

	Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want
	to 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 are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement
	has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their
	copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the
	Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under
	the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in
	the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

	That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to
	read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but
	only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific
	articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not
	to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.

	"I agree," many say, "but what 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 do to stop
	them." But there is something we can, something that's already being
	done: we can fight back.

	Those with access to these resources--students, librarians,
	scientists--you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this
	banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But
	you need not--indeed, morally, you cannot--keep this privilege for
	yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you
	have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests
	for friends.

	Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not 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 all of this action goes on in 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 murdering its crew.
	But sharing isn't immoral--it's a moral imperative. Only those
	blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

	Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under
	which they operate require it--their shareholders would revolt at
	anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them,
	passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make
	copies.

	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
	our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

	We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies
	and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of
	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. Will you join us?

	Aaron Swartz
	July 2008, Eremo, Italy

	Original source

	tags: article,manifesto,philosophy

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