One drawback of these high prices is that it keeps the best knowledge on most subjects from disseminating to the public, a significant blow to the often poorly-

One drawback of these high prices is that it keeps the best knowledge on most subjects from disseminating to the public, a significant blow to the often poorly-informed public and a waste of knowledge (which generally has little value unless shared). For example, even in a relatively sophisticated forum like HN where there is a respect and hunger for knowledge, how often does someone link to an actual journal article? Who has even an opportunity to read them? There are occasional links to Nature, Science, or IEEE or ACM publications, but the best knowledge is bottled up beyond our reach. At best we get to read blogs and newspapers talking about the research.