First of all, I agree that the behavior of authors and publishers can have certain effects in the information marketplace; what they cannot do is change the fact that information is a)inherently costly and b)not usually a public good. Remember that “public good” is an economic term with an actual definition — it doesn’t just mean what we might like it to mean. Government documents fit that definition (and so, I’ll grant you, does public-domain information). But the whole open access question is really about information that does NOT fit that definition. Too many in our profession want to define all scholarly information as a public good, and that simply doesn’t work.

To be fair, I think this is somewhat circumspect as well. He uses government documents as an example of information that is a public good…Legally owned by the public. However, he does not address the largest area of information as a public good: the public domain. Many of those heavily involved in Open Access concerns are doing so because of the overtly draconian copyright laws that are creating a paucity of the public domain.

Then someone must have had a really good stash of drugs when the Telecommunications Act of 1934 was drafted. Not to mention the establishment of the Federal Depository Library Program. Oh, and there’s little things we call public libraries …

I can see saying, ‘Not all information is a public good,’ or ‘information is not simply a public good,’ or ‘the practicalities of production and dissemination of information does not fit the traditional standards of resources we usually ascribe to “the public good” …’

But no ….