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Comment by apo | Hacker News Reader

Elsevier owns copyrighted material, which it licenses to individuals and institutions for a fee. The fee is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, which is no different than any other intellectual property such as movies, music, books, or software.

If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted.

The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should fall under some other system is a red herring. Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.

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Elsevier attempted - successfully, for quite some time - to create a gate-keeping oligopoly by inserting it as a choke point into academic publishing while providing no real added value.

This isn't about copyright, because original authors are forced to pay-to-play.

In a genuine copyright market, creators are paid in exchange for exploitation of copyright.

If they have to pay up to sign over their rights, that's not a copyright issue - that's extortion.

It's not unpaid academic labor, it's actually exploitative labor. They charge the academics ~$3000 - 5000 to publish via any of their journals.

The other unpaid labor is peer review — keep in mind that reviewers don’t get paid!

> Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.

I have two counter arguments here:

1. Funding agencies should not permit this. If I were to fund public research, the results should be public under an appropriate license.

2. Something is very wrong with the system if authors are willing to do this without being paid. If Elsevier paid the author $3k, that would be another story. (And possibly unethical.)

> 1. Funding agencies should not permit this. If I were to fund public research, the results should be public under an appropriate license.

And more and more are they doing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S

Unfortunately, the US is still not on board - that would make a major difference.

> If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted.

Sure, but access can still be obtained. For free. So they can sod off.

Edit: Elsevier and the like are predatory scum. They bought top academic journals, and have increased prices dramatically in recent decades. They're bleeding out the industry, as they ride it down to irrelevance. Just as some have done with the newspaper industry.

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