It's interesting to see David Parry's perspective on the situation that he calls the Knowledge Cartel. He believes that certain big corporations are trying to own everything that they possibly can and make profit off of that. His example of how educations companies and journal publishers such as Elsevier is taking hold of most of the licences on these academic journals, and then in turn making everyone pay for that service, whether it be a subscription or buying an article. He states that this is completely wrong and even though David Parry had more of an extremist view and idea on this situation, i cannot help but agree with him under these circumstances.
By holding these licences and copyrights to these articles when no one else can have them, they are creating what David Parry is calling an artificial scarcity. But because some people have no other option but buy it from them at a high price, they can create a monopoly in this industry because they can set the price. And if you don't pay them, then you can't get the job done, whether that's for a class or work. Other companies hold these similar rights for textbooks where they can put it at extremely high prices here in the US just because average statistics show that we could afford them at that cost. When in reality students are eating chips and salsa for every meal just to afford a $300 textbook.
How else are we going to gain this knowledge? These corporations are stifling innovation and further progression because it is limiting only those with enough wealth to buy these books. David Parry's solution of pirating and stealing these articles are a bit extreme. But one can't help but agree with him under these circumstances where there is really no other alternative.
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