I agree, though a simpler solution than nationalization would be to legalize what Sci-Hub is already doing. It shouldn't be illegal to post a PDF on my website when the author wants it to be read freely and isn't going to to get paid for it anyway.
better yet, just abolish copyright and replace it with some automatic compensation system for the original author.
i don't know if "society" would exactly be better off if 100 film studios were all competing to make the best avengers movie, but it would certainly be good for creativity.
That's a serious argumentative leap to make. Do you really think that's the best solution for this case, or do you maybe have a pre-existing position on this issue which you believe this instance supports? The easiest option is likely to pass a law that publicly-funded research is publicly accessible.
> automatic compensation system
Could you detail this a little further? I'm not sure exactly for what you are advocating.
I think researchgate does that with a social network for scientists. I think if scientists can maintain a personal site (or use their lab site) and put the papers there you can mostly find them with google scholar. Researchgate works as well if you don't want to maintain a personal site. I'm not affiliated with researchgate in anyway but have posted by papers and thesis there which can be accessed via google scholar.
If it's in an academic's employment contract that they don't get to keep the rights to their academic papers it means 1) they already got paid and 2) they can't give away work that they already sold.
