http://archive.org
July 2008, Eremo, Italy

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

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