Is this the revolt? | Gavia Libraria

"The Loon has thought for some time that an inevitable battle in the struggle against paywalled research knowledge would occur when academe revolted in collective outrage against paywallers imposing severe punishment for an everyday academic practice. If publishers had won the Georgia State case, if they win on appeal and destroy e-reserves, if the Authors Guild had beaten Hathi Trust in court, if npg hadn’t backed down in some fashion from its California price hike, those might have done it. Do Swartz’s suicide and the subsequent eruption of #pdftribute mean this is the proverbial it? Not quite… but it’s closer than anything has yet been, and if the Loon worked for paywallers, she’d worry. Two truths dampen the backlash: first, Swartz was not himself an academic, so most academics do not feel directly attacked; and second, few academics can imagine breaking into a server closet with a laptop. Moreover, the mourning and anger for Swartz, heartfelt and activist though it is, appears not to have made the leap offline, and most of academe is still stubbornly, resolutely offline... What #pdftribute does bring to the table is a new urgency for those taking part in it, an urgency that changes “open access? … meh” to “there is good and cogent reason to make our work open.” That belief is new to most #pdftributers, as it was to many Cost of Knowledge signatories, and while the initial impulse will unquestionably fade, the belief likely won’t.  In other words, paywallers are having their apathetic silent majority chipped away at, again. That’s not good for them.  The Loon grudges the price. Exceedingly grudges it. Swartz was her kind of people, never mind that no one should die the way he did. She does believe that Swartz would approve #pdftribute and court longer-range impact for it, however, and she will do what is in her to bring that about..."