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Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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# Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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==============================
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Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, by Aaron Swartz, in several languages.
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A copy of **Guerilla Open Access Manifesto** archived from [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/page/n1)
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The manifesto can be accessed at https://openaccessmanifesto.wordpress.com, but I am migrating to https://openaccessmanifesto.netlify.app/.
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which is written by **[Arron Swart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)** (*November 8, 1986 - January 11, 2013*)
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-----------------------------------
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Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
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Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
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themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
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in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
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private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the
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sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
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There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
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valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
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their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
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even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
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Everything up until now will have been lost.
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That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their
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colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?
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Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to
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children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.
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"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they
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make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal —
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there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
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already being done: we can fight back.
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Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been
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given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world
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is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for
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yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords
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with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
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Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been
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sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by
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the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
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But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or
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piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a
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ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only
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those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
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Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate
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require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they
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have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who
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can make copies.
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There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the
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grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public
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culture.
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We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with
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the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need
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to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific
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journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open
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Access.
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With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the
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privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
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Aaron Swartz
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July 2008, Eremo, Italy
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>>**Aaron Hillel Swartz** (*November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013*) was an American computer programmer,
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entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. He was involved in the
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development of the web feed format RSS and the Markdown(example this README.md) publishing format, the organization
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Creative Commons, and the website framework web.py,
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and was a co-founder of the social news site Reddit. In 2011 he was improsied for connecting one of his computer to MIT server for accessing Research and
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Academic Journals, later on 11th January 2013 he committed suicide. [Know More](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)
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---------------------------
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Original archive available at [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/page/n1)
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