Having successfully shut down PubScience, a site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are now looking to attack other sources of free information. The lobbying campaign is led by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), a trade association of commercial electronic publishers. According to the SIAA, "it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free." As Peter Suber comments, "Let's get this breathtaking assertion straight. When the research is funded by the government and the articles donated by authors, then taxpaying readers should have to pay a second levy to read them, and pay it to a third party with no role in the research?" Suber calls the SIAA action "piracy." It's hard to disagree.
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