Sleepwalking away from our responsibility

Peter Murray-Rust, Do you read journals, or "use a database"?  A Scientist and the Web, September 11, 2006. Excerpt:

...[T[here is a [growing] tension between the publisher and the users - significant content is illegally downloaded and an important role of the publisher is acting as "policeman" making sure that content is not stolen....

Now, I have never advocated breaking or abolishing copyright, but it is clear that this is creating a tension in the publisher/reader community. I've been involved in setting or being on the board of scientific journals and I see their major purpose as enhancing scholarly communication. I'm worried that we are losing sight of this, where journals in non-profit organisations are seen as a way of subsiding other activities of the society. If the publishers see "users" as a group who have a major motive to steal content, I suspect things will get worse.

At some stage we seem to have flipped from a community where publishers interpreted the wishes of the community and served them - for a reasonable fee - to a world where publishers make the rules and police their non-compliance....

It worries me that this has happened almost silently. I remember in ca. 1970 (when I was too inexperienced to notice) that authors were asked to transfer copyright to publishers....I didn't think twice about it - but it was one of the biggest mistakes of my scientific life. Are we sleepwalking into something just as serious? ...