Topic 5: Open access to information for all – two sides of the same coin

Accessibility of information is probably the most important issue for a student at any point of their studying. Without relevant material there is no possible way one can progress in their education. It’s not about just literature, books/article availability, but about information availability as a whole.

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First, let’s try to understand the reason for content producer to restrict access to the data or make it only commercially available.

As obvious as other examples you might have encountered reading articles about information not being publicly available – try to put yourself on content producer place. Imagine, you’ve just spend a year or even more on your research, achieved a lot in the process and now you want to use it – make it commercially available or sell it to some research department or other institution. Without further explanation – let’s just say it’s possible and there is nothing out of ordinary in the situation.

44728 How would it feel to just upload your productive research online and share it with the whole world for free? While some people might find a pleasure in sharing the knowledge and a simple desire for the research to be further analyzed and used by other researchers, many others, probably would not want to do it, as it doesn’t give any physical profit or anything that can be reimbursed for your years of research.

It’s not about what’s fair or what’s not, but more in how people approach the work they are doing – some enjoy the process and learning from it just for themselves, others want to work for the profit in the end and see no pleasure in sharing their work for free.

That’s said, considering the society we are leaving in, it’s probably more about profit rather than the process. People are used to the idea that every work should be paid off and that nothing is free. While society consists of just individuals it’s really difficult to make an impact and change people perception of things and the way we approach different questions and issues nowadays.

Let’s try to compare the difference of information* being free published and commercially available:

* By information we assume any digital content created by people – text/literature, audio/video materials etc.

Of course the topic itself is huge and there are a lot to cover, but hopefully after reading this you could see things a bit different, however, as said before, it’s not about making it right, but about finding a reason for doing your work and what’s it’s purpose for you and for the people. In other words – before trying to find an answer on whether information should be free or not we should properly understand the content creators and what was the actual purpose of their research.

P.S. If you want to read something interesting, and you are able to look at things from different perspective – have a look at The Venus Project by Jacque Fresco. It’s a theoretical view of the world in which sustainable global civilization is achieved by having not money, but resource oriented economy. A world without commerce, where every bits of information is free and is used by people to drive civilization forward.

http://www.thevenusproject.com