Is this another RIAA or is it legit?

[James Knott]

Peter wrote:
> My frustration with paper searches, as well as the frustration of the Cambridge
> scientist who was asked to pay $48 to view his own Creative Commons licensed
> paper some time ago (see Slashdot) has led me to discover PRISM. Good or evil?
>
>    http://www.prismcoalition.org/topics.htm
>
> They seem to be strong advocates of selling for good money to the public what
> has been already paid for by said public in the form of taxes, which paid for
> the research, and of said government not interfering in said selling. This does
> not even touch upon the subject of Creative Commons and Public Domani papers
> (but I have touched that issue in the previous paragraph). I am not amused.
>
>    
It does seem to be another example of greed harming the public good.  If 
the research was paid for with tax dollars, the results belong to the 
taxpayer.  I don't have a problem with someone charging for publishing 
books or creating a search web site, provided the content is freely 
available elsewhere.  A good example would be the internet RFCs.  While 
you can buy books etc., the content, in plain text form, is still freely 
available for download or on-line reading.

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