Is the Public Domain freely accessible to the public? If you thing about it, no.
Every great art form and platform goes through its good eras and its bad eras. They have their Golden Age, which is usually either preceded or followed by a Dark Age. In this case, we will be looking at the Internet, and its downfall since its peak. The early to mid-2000s was a time when the internet grew and flourished into something more than just a program on your desktop, it evolved into a fully realized global communication network, where people shared ideas and sources openly and freely with the world. However, times have certainly changed from then. People being people realised they could make some serious money on the internet, and none more so than the people in power. Whoever controls the access of information, controls the world.
In class we talked about Digital Ownership. We talked about how nowadays, the internet is no longer a majority public affair. It is instead controlled by these private companies who place communication and information behind a paywall. I was honestly baffled, as were the rest of my course-mates, when we learned that our lecturer’s journal that she wrote costs 50 euro to download, when neither herself nor the editors were paid a cent in the making of the making said journals. She works for a publicly funded Institution, so technically her research is funded by the taxpayer, and yet it is trapped behind a paywall, to which she receives no profit from. It’s absurd.
The Internet should be this place where we have easy and very cost-effective right access to things. Times have changed from 50 years ago where you'd have to print them. Imagine having to distribute them to every library, you could actually just have this centralized. And yet people are charged almost the same amount for a digital copy of a book then the printed version.
Plenty of books that are out of copywrite, for example Shakespeare, Jane Austin and a lot of texts used for schools. They should be available for free consumption on the internet. However, it was discussed in class that many schools and colleges will require you to get “Set texts” – to get a particular version. They want you to buy a specific version even though it should be available on your kindle for basically nothing. Shakespeare isn’t getting paid anymore, Jane Austin isn’t getting paid anymore. But the colleges will make you buy the version that they have a contract with. They are essentially forcing our hand and making us spend money by prescribing people texts or methods of accessing stuff that is actually in the public domain. They have monetized free information. If you’re a student, and you’re studying science or law or anything else really, why do you need to buy these particular books, when all of these Science documents and law cases should be freely accessible? Why are documents that are produced by public taxpayers, publicly funded research in publicly funded universities locked behind a paywall?
According to a documentary on Aaron Swartz, the American Government “make about 120 million dollars a year on the pacer system and it doesn’t cost anything near that according to their own records, and in fact it’s illegal. The E-government act of 2002 states that the courts may charge only to the extent necessary in order to reimburse the costs of running pacer.” They take advantage of the power they have, and when someone like Aaron comes along and tries to protest, by mass downloading all the files, they stick the FBI on him. Now it is important to note that Aaron has not done anything illegally, the FBI got involved because of the fear of them losing money. They were scared of what he could do. They are prepared to arrest him for a crime he has yet to commit. Mass downloading without intent to distribute or without breach of copyright is not actually illegal.
According to my lecturer, as a college student of Munster Technological University (formerly Cork Institute of Technology), I have free access to a number of articles and documents from the Jay Store, and I can download as many as I need for college. But once I have them, I can do what I please with them, the only thing I can’t do is sell them on for monetary gain of any kind. Aaron Swartz believed that larger institutions were gatekeeping the world’s information, which they are. Institutes pay exorbitant fees to keep journals in subscription more. Large Ivy League schools have access to much larger collections then say the likes of MTU has, which seems unfair. Just because you can afford to go to a more expensive university doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have access to information. And the thing that annoyed Swartz the most about all this was that a lot of this stuff was funded by the public’s money, and yet the public don’t have free access.
Aaron Swartz was kind of a Robin Hood like figure – take from the rich and give to the poor. He was mass collecting these articles which he had a right to collect given his status as a student at the time. His end is quite tragic, taking his own life due to the stress of being followed and watched by the FBI, that paranoia would cause such extreme anxiety to anyone. And just like Robin Hood, the everyday folk would side and support with Aaron. Information should be accessible to all, regardless of class and status. And with the whole world connected digitally, this should be easy for all, but unfortunately, people in power prevent that from happening.
Brian Knappenberger (2014) The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron. From: Swartzhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
Glink (2019) The Golden Age of the Internet Is Over. From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU6CuSMzNus&t=276s
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