Sure they did, they said knowledge should be free.
If it is funded, someone's got to pay for it, and that is by definition not free.
If it is the government who funds it, you're paying for it through tax dollars. And, you're not paying a competitive rate, which means low quality information is coming out.
edit: I'm done with this comment chain of people claiming free doesn't mean $0. It clearly did in the original comment to which I replied, where they said "I am of the opinion knowledge should be free and easily accessible."
In the context of freedom of information the opposite of free information is not funded information- it's censored, withheld, horded, etc.
You don't need to fear paywalls. You're capable of learning and creating the same knowledge as any other person.
Food is finite. When you buy material goods, you subtract from the seller's supply of goods and add to your own. It's impossible to create new goods out of nothing. Since there isn't enough for everyone, an economy naturally arises.
Information is infinite. Copying and transmitting data is not only trivial, it is natural. That's why people came up with ways to create artificial scarcity. The only cost associated with human knowledge and art is that of creating it. After it's created, information costs $0.
All data, all files on a computer, they're essentially just really big numbers that humanity happened to discover. Once the number is known, modern computers make it possible to copy and transmit it for almost $0. Paywalls? Only one person needs to pay in order to get copy and distribute it to everyone else.
Nobody is saying creators shouldn't be compensated. We're saying they need a new business model. It's the 21st century. You no longer need huge printing presses in order to make copies of something at scale. It's as easy as copy paste.
Published material is not infinite, nor is an author's time.
Information is infinite if you definite it to mean all information, but that is not the context here. The context here is published work.
Sci-Hub proves otherwise.
> nor is an author's time.
True.
It's your right to withhold information just as it would be your right to withhold water if you had the only well in town. Likewise it's my right to use information to liberate withheld information just as it would be my right to provide well digging tools to your parched neighbors.
The only difference is that I'm thinking of what is best for everyone and you're thinking only of yourself. That's your right; take the low road if it makes you happy.
Information is like the food in my example, not the "only water supply" in yours. Leibniz and Newton independently developed calculus, for example.
> you're thinking only of yourself. That's your right; take the low road if it makes you happy.
It's not selfish to be compensated for your work. Authors can choose themselves whether they want to make some of their work freely available, just as a market can give away some food or not.
As far as I'm aware, authors get very little of the compensation for the work they're doing.
> Authors can choose themselves whether they want to make some of their work freely available, just as a market can give away some food or not.
Not if the established procedure for publishing is a journal.
As for journals, I understand the distaste academics have for these. This thread was about whether all published information should be free, not just journals.
Grants, shareware, donationware, donation subscriptions (like patreon), crowdfunding, and the list goes on and on- of all the ways information creation is compensated prior to the information being given away for free.
Copying information takes virtually no work. It's not unreasonable to hold that the concept of "intillectual property" is morally bankrupt.
Nobody here suggested creators shouldn't be compensated.