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Comment by mkramlich | Hacker News Reader

> I paid for the research with my tax payer money. Give me full access to it.

though I have a similar desire I don't think that's a good argument for justifying it. why? evaluate the following symmetrical situations:

> I paid for the [tank, aircraft carrier, nukes, Fort Knox, etc] with my tax payer money. Therefore...

that said, I do think there's a greater net benefit to humanity, and scientific progress will accelerate, the easier, cheaper and less restrictive access we have to papers and research results.

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> I paid for the [tank, aircraft carrier, nukes, Fort Knox, etc] with my tax payer money. Therefore...

That's not a very good comparison, as those are all rival goods, and furthermore have obvious negative externalities (IE are dangerous). I can't think of a non-rival government-funded good (without harmful externalities) that would NOT make sense to to make freely available.

Edit: Oh hey, I'm being downvoted for an opinion. Sitting at -1 right now.

Don't worry about early downvotes. (Also, don't complain about downvotes. That only makes the signal to noise ratio worse.)

Don't complain about complaining about downvotes.

Oh, I meant to educate about the culture, not complain.

Not sure why you're being down-voted. The comparison you were pointing out as being obviously idiotic is, in fact, obviously idiotic.

There's a far better comparison to be made with IP produced by NASA, for instance, which is automatically released directly to the public domain on the grounds that the American public is who commissioned it in the first place (for the rest of the world, it's a gift - you're welcome).

Not all IP; just most copyrighted images that NASA themselves produce. Patents by NASA are licensed to companies [1].

[1] http://technology.nasa.gov/patents

edit: Most of the biggest high profile publications from NASA get published in Science/Nature, which are both closed access FWIW.

Those are physically objects that cost a lot to replicate. The cost of making digital copies of research documents on the other hand...

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