[WS:] However, the availability of research papers in the period preceding the Xerox era was even tinier. You are using wrong reference - you should not compare today's dissemination technology to yesterday's dissemination technology, but today's dissemination technology as practiced to that technology's full potential. The point that the author of this essay is making is that artificial barriers are being erected to limit the full potential of available dissemination technologies, and there is no good justification for that limitation (profits of distributors are not a good justification for several reasons). Stated differently, knowledge is a public good and access to it should not be artificially limited.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."