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Science Must Push Copyright Aside
by Richard
Stallman
pdf (12 Kb)
[This article originally appeared on Nature's web site.
The article is part of a larger series on Nature, and the
introduction to the series provides some useful background on
the issues Mr. Stallman addresses]
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 non-proprietary 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 on-line 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% and 3% 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
on-line 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.
[Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, launched
in 1984 to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for
'GNU's Not Unix'), and thereby give computer users the freedom
that most of them have lost. GNU is free software: everyone is
free to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes
either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, combining the GNU
system and the Linux kernel, has an estimated 17 to 20 million
users. Stallman was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship
in 1990]
Copyright 2001 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are
permitted in any medium provided the copyright notice and this
notice are preserved.
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