I don't believe in paying for scientific information. This is supposed to be stuff that everyone is able to access from the rocket scientist to a kid in school. Sure, providing free information will allow some unscrupulous person to use it for ill, but I find the alternative even more frightening. What if we had to pay for finding something simple like how to fix a bike? Companies would profit but the population would become mindless dummies. Common knowledge would be thrown back into the Dark Ages.
More sites targeted for shutdown. A commercial publisher has been successful at shutting down PubScience, a site that provided free access to scientific and technical articles. I personally think this is the beginning of the end, unless people become more active in attempting to stop it. I was suspicious about their claim that they wouldn't go after PubMed (my lifeblood!) next so I went to the website to reassure myself that it was still there.
And don't think authors of scientific papers get any money from publishing. They actually lose money. So it'll be worse all around because researchers also wouldn't have their work exposed to the largest possible audience.
