*shakes fist at academic paywalls*

[bunn]

How many people really want to read this article I desire about crime in Roman Egypt, published 1963 - and are able to do so?  I'm guessing maybe 6, but I think that might even be an overestimate.  And there isn't even a way to pay an exorbitant fee and get access to the bloody thing!   I know it is there, but it might as well be sealed inside a capsule on the bloody Moon.

I was reading a 'success story' article today about someone using Google Adsense to successfully monetise content, and it occurs to me that rather than stick all these bloody paywalls everywhere and make it next to impossible to get through the sodding things, it might be a better thing for everyone involved if they just bunged them up - past a certain date in the past maybe - as freeware on cheap hosting, and ran a really good properly structured set of ad campaigns against them.

Is it over-suspicious to suspect that universities wouldn't like this as it might mean people actually learning stuff and drawing conclusions without their expensive mediation...?  Or is is just OMG, advertising!  That's like... TRADE!  OH THE HORROR!!!  We'll be knighting the grandchildren of mill-owners next and then where will we be?

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Fortunately I found a synopsis in someone's PhD thesis that gives the bones of the argument and a couple of examples (in order to say 'what a silly argument this is and how deluded was this fool in 1963' - but hey, that will do.

I love theses-es! People always seem to be happy to share those about all over the place. Pity there isn't a better way to organise them, they seem to be scattered unindexably all over the place.