|
If public funds are involved, I've come to the firm belief that the public should have full access to the creation involved, be it through physical access to a garden/museum/etc or at cost access to the information (which via electronics is near $0.00).
One of my pet peeves is that publicly funded research is often only available through costly journals as opposed to free access via the net. The fact is, free access is possible, as most journals already have electronic versions they charge big $ to access. Similarly, research that isn't published, but has been paid for via public funding, shoudl still be made accessible. If artists, writers, musicians, and movie makers are funded by the public, their work, too, should be made available at minimal cost/free to the public who paid for the work.
I find it, for example, galling that I have to pay for postal code/GPS coordinate data from the Canadian Postal Service. Our taxes have already paid for the material.
|