Since when hurting business profits becomes “government censorship”?
September 17, 2007 – 17:37Andrew Leonard in his Salon article mocks science publishers that began PR and lobbying campaign to strain free access to publications resulted from (US) government-funded research (that’s nearly all fundamental research, as far as I understand). In particular they stated in their press release:
Policies are being proposed that threaten to introduce undue government intervention in science and scholarly publishing, putting at risk the integrity of scientific research by … undermining the peer review process by compromising the viability of non-profit and commercial journals that manage and fund it [AND] opening the door to scientific censorship in the form of selective additions to or omissions from the scientific record.I may understand (but not tolerate) when here, in Ukraine, government-owned telco monopoly “Ukrtelecom” sues every POTS-VOIP gateway it can reach for “conducting unlicensed telco business”. But hey, the US? Leading democracy on the planet?
So I second cited titbit:
”… any publisher of scientific research who even begins to entertain the notion that free access to scientific information can or should be equated with government censorship should be mocked mercilessly in every publication, online or off, free or subscription required, evanescent as a blog or solid as a hard-copy Encyclopedia Britannica, from now until they beg forgiveness from every human on this planet for their disingenuous mendacity.”Let the mocking begin.
