Owning the Future: Looting the Library:

” As we plunge

into the digital realm, the nation’s 16,000 public libraries are

striving to uphold their tradition as protectors of public access to

new books and articles. But publishers, in an increasingly bald,

frontal assault on the library’s mission, have something very

different in mind: a pay-per-use model for information content

that will largely shut libraries out.

The battle is being waged on many fronts, from legislative

initiatives and lawsuits to the publishing industry’s unilateral

pursuit of copy-protection technologies that will keep

users—including libraries—from sharing digital content.”

Pat Schroeder, in a former life a distinguished progressive Congressional representative from Colorado and now chief lobbyist for the publishing industry, “has been quoted as saying that

publishers have to ‘learn to push back’ against libraries, which

she portrays as an organized band of pirates!” Technology Review And: The science world is in revolt at power of the journal owners: “Scientists around the world are in revolt against moves by a

powerful group of private corporations to lock decades of publicly

funded western scientific research into expensive,

subscription-only electronic databases.” The Guardian