Tucker, The Magic of Open-Source Publishing

This cause is near and dear to my heart. Paywalls are perfectly defensible for journalistic sites that provide a service to paying subscribers. It is another matter when it comes to broader interests. Here the magic of open-source publishing can make all the difference. This is because ideas have a special quality: They are infinitely shareable, malleable, and reproducible. Private institutions deploy copyright to protect them, but this is often to the detriment of public well-being.

As we look back in history, the origin of the idea of restricted publishing was during the religious wars in England following the Reformation years. The Catholics sought to block the Protestants and vice versa. The beneficiaries were those in the publishing industry, who wanted to restrict competition within their ranks.

The tighter the copyright grew in England, the more creativity, which involves inspiration and borrowings from others, was throttled. There is a reason why the most famous and creative material in the music world from the 17th century to the 19th century came not from England (Handel excepted) but from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. It’s because copyright in music was not enforced on the Continent but was in England.

Indeed, music copyright did not really have much meaning on an international level until the 1890s. This means that Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Lully, Vivaldi, and so on all composed not with copyright but with simple contracts with publishers. They had exclusive deals for first printings. That was enough to make money for the creators.

I have persuaded every not-for-profit institution for which I’ve worked to adopt this model. This is why the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard are so widely available. They are in the commons, owned by everyone and available to everyone. While at the Mises Institute I published 1,000 books into the commons. I did the same at Laissez Faire Books, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the American Institute for Economic Research.

My proudest achievement in this regard concerns Gregorian chant. I’ve long had an obsession with its beauties and history. It was the first serious music of the West and the foundation of everything else that followed. I had a question in my mind as to what happened to it. Why did it go away for so long, replaced by guitar strumming and silly songs at Christian and Catholic worship?

As it turns out, there is a story here. For centuries after the High Middle Ages, the music fell into disuse just because it became unfashionable. During the Romantic period of the late 19th century, when every religion was rediscovering lost forms (Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam), the Vatican pushed hard to reconstruct the old Gregorian chants from original manuscripts. Once the whole thing was done, it made a huge mistake in claiming an exclusive copyright for the church.

Then the gold rush began. The monastery in France called Solesmes made its own editions with special markings from the originals (which it was permitted to do), and then put those under strict copyright. There was a decades-long war between the monastery and the Vatican about which had the best editions. It was an industrial struggle over profits.

Then the publishers got involved. Solesmes made exclusive deals with international publishers, which charge schools, seminaries, and parishes exorbitant prices to obtain their works. The resentment began to grow. It was a little rich club of snobs with elite publishers. They controlled the textbooks, the hirings in cathedrals, the diocesan music departments, and most educational institutions. They worked very hard to maintain their exclusive rights.

It was like a medieval guild, complete with high profits and select experts. This went on for decades. Then it all came crashing down.

The Second Vatican Council came along in the 1960s and opened up the music and translated the liturgy out of Latin and into the vernacular. There was no music to go with the new liturgy. An entire generation used the opportunity to overthrow the elites that had maintained such a tight grip on the old chants. Instead, they seized on idiotic folk songs played by amateurs with guitars, thus driving off a generation of musically literate worshipers.

Eventually, new publishers got involved and copyrighted and restricted the new music, too. They got rich from robbing the same crowd that had been robbed before: schools, seminaries, and parishes. It was at this point that I came along, with an outside consulting role on the work of putting out a new English missal. My role, of course, concerned music—but I had a larger agenda. I wanted to see the old Gregorian chants put into the commons.

There were several steps. Through careful research, I found that the old Vatican editions had fallen out of copyright, and so I put them online. I expected a legal challenge and lawyered up. Nothing happened. That was a good sign.

The next step was to deal with the new chants being produced by the Vatican. I had several conversations with a curial official who was involved. He then invited me to address a group of cardinals and others at the Vatican. I did this. I gave an impassioned speech about this history and why the music of the church should belong to the whole of humanity. I prevailed and the deed was done.

Today, Catholic music of a traditional sort is undergoing a revival. This is not only because it is beautiful, but also because you can download it all for free from the internet. You can print it and sing it without fear.

I did the same with historical music of the Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist traditions. A new movement was born and the world is healing—in part because the music has all left copyright and is now free to the world to use.

The same can occur with science and many other areas. This is why Bhattacharya’s decision here is consequential. Now anyone can download research papers from major journals. No more rackets, no more exclusives, no more private clubs. There are so many wonderful independent experts who can help science be better. Now they can contribute, too.

Maybe we can confidently say that open-source publishing is the future. It happens with bold leadership. Bhattacharya and his boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are providing exactly that.