In the November 2004 Bulletin, Michael Geist describes Access Copyright programs using such inflammatory and silly terms as "cash grab" and "unnecessary." He makes no distinction between scientific and scholarly information (for which creators have already been paid, which is owned by large predatory corporations like Elsevier and Kluwer, and which scholars would love to have freely distributed) and creative works (for which creators need to be paid and protected and have not been paid, or only minimally so).

Geist's distinction between historical material and current material is fine and important, but he lumps the Nobel prize winners' concerns, which are dead-on for scholarly work, with poets, magazine journalists and short story writers, who have fragile existences at best. No cushy Canada Research Chairs for them. Overall his analysis is "lite," misleading and dangerously generalized.

David Waltner-Toews
Population Medicine, University of Guelph