Last week, the Department of Energy bowed to pressure from private science publishers and shut down a its free website with gobs of great science samizdata. Dan Gillmor's rant on the subject is fantastic:
The correct word for what has happened here is "theft" — because the government has allowed private interests to steal from the public domain.
The claim that this was done to save money — a paltry $200,000 a year — doesn't even begin to pass the smell test. This was an arrangement on behalf of corporate interests, and an absolute thumb in the eye to the public.
It's as if the book publishers persuaded communities to shutter public libraries. (Not that they won't try; e-publishing could lead to that by default.)
Now, anyone who wants access to information collected and/or catalogued using our tax dollars will have to pay for it. Pay again, that is.
Watch this kind of thing happen again and again. America's government doesn't work for the people. It works for campaign contributors and corporate interests, for the rich and powerful who are getting just about everything they want from the government they've purchased.
What to do? Some public-minded foundation should immediately offer to put this back online, by covering the $200,000 cost. Or the collective brain out there should find a way to put the data up on peer-to-peer systems.
Yes, any of these workarounds would set a bad precedent, encouraging more of these information removals. But the bad stuff is already happening. Since it's obvious that the government won't do the right thing, we're going to have to go around the government that no longer works for citizens.
