etwas besseres als den tod

[pirate cinema berlin]

Pirate Cinema prefers to remain absent from situations that don't require its 
presence, and so we don't usually comment on daily news, or circulate obituaries 
of people we've never given similar attention when they were still alive.

But while what the following text proposes - to free nothing but information, 
and to reclaim nothing but the public domain - won't be sufficient to end the 
dictatorship of copyright, it's still a good start, and since Aaron can no 
longer make revisions, only remind us of our failure to end the dictatorship of 
copyright, the very least we can ask you to join us for is to finish what he, as
outlined below, had begun.



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
July 2008, Eremo, Italy



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