Bundles, Big Deals, and the Copyright Wars: What Can Academic Libraries Learn from the Record Industry Crash?

This article reviews the contention that U.S. laws favor copyright owners over consumers, and pre-existing models over innovation. The relationship of commercial publishers to the Open Access movement is compared to that of the creators/users of file sharers and the Record Industry. The library literature bears out the contention that journal publishers have exhibited some of the behaviors that contributed to the decline of the major record labels. Librarians who support free scholarship will find the music industry plight instructive; just as iTunes fulfilled consumer demand, Open Access and other alternatives will transform publishing.