Big publication houses earn huge profit by using paywalls for the access of articles by exploiting the copyright laws. On the other hand, the paywalls significantly deprive the researchers from countries with poor resources from accessing the latest research articles. The articles are written by the authors for the dissemination of knowledge and progress of science overall for the advancement of current knowledge. More readers also potentially mean more citations. Why can not the access to knowledge be free (or affordable) for all?
Knowledge is still seen by most of us as a commodity. It should be free, as it was in ancient times. For instance, during the Vedic times, knowledge was passed down for free from the Guru to the disciples. Today, in certain communities, it is still the case, where knowledge, particularly traditional knowledge is passed down from father to son / mother to daughter. That being said, it is difficult to completely eliminate copyright. Copyright provides recognition to the creators of original works and remunerates them for their contribution. Mainly, it protects from misuse and unfair use of a creator's hard work. To balance this, new forms of learning and resource-creation/distribution have emerged. One such alternative that balances both the need for education to be free and protection of works is open educational resources (OER). I have attached herewith an article that directly addresses your question.
Article Intellectual Property Rights and the Ancient Indian Perspective
You may find useful this series of articles written by a former student of mine: http://www.ipdigit.eu/author/sophie/
This is the social utility/social justice need that digital information technology can address, if allowed to do so. While authors need and deserve compensation for their efforts, as stated by Prof. Ganapathi, analog copyright business models emphasized physical copies as commodities, sometimes to the detriment of cultural advancement and often to the detriment of intellectual property social justice. Digital information technology renders physical/individual copies (and institutional distributors thereof) socially insignificant; access instead is key, and access can priced to accommodate knowledge dissemination and individual resources.
What should or should not be free or compensated for access is a very deep question that you need to think about for some time. Perhaps freedom of information is what you mean, which is a different question. Knowledge requires work to translate the information, and, at least in our current developed nations' societies, this kind of work requires compensation. My own thought is that maximum social benefit will be derived from free access to information, but what you make of it should be yours unless you decide to give it away. Have a few papers on this topic.
The creation and dissemination of information needs to be paid for in some way. However, old systems of protection do not properly protect the interests of the public, the creators of the information, those who pay to create the information (government grants, faculty research), and those who distribute the information or works. Society benefits from information being broadly available and cheaply available to people who can then use that information and build on it. So what is needed is a system that maximizes dissemination and access to information while compensating fairly those who create and disseminate the information. Many of us put our scholarly works online at places like SSRN or our own websites or ResearchGate. However, in the sciences the standard is still strangely protective. MIT has recently started to change its culture in this respect.
Copyright as received from the 19th century does not necessarily serve the various interests well in the digital age. Some protection may make sense, but for scientific works, it seems hard to justify locking it away behind "paywalls."
Internet technology and OA Journals brought new approach to science and knowledge. It would be nice if access to knowledge is free, but who will cover the expenses?
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