Musings on worms turning

"So much is noteworthy about the California action that I'm having trouble synthesizing it all just in my own head, but let's start with its scope. This is the first action I know of that implicates such a tremendous pool of faculty labor. It's similar in kind to journal declarations of independence—both are labor-withdrawal protests against maddening pricing—but California's action is extraordinarily vaster.... [I]f one state university system (granted, it is California's huge one) can credibly threaten to bring a fleet of top-tier journals to its knees merely by withdrawing uncompensated faculty labor, what are we paying publishers all this money for again?..."