System of a Takedown: Control and De-commodification in the Circuits of Academic Publishing

Since 2012 the Public Library/Memory of the World1 project has been developing and publicly supporting scenarios for massive disobedience against the current regulation of production and circulation of knowledge and culture in the digital realm. While the significance of that year may not be immediately apparent to
everyone, across the peripheries of an unevenly developed world of higher education and research it produced a resonating void. The takedown of the book-sharing site Library.nu in early 2012 gave rise to an anxiety that the equalizing effect that its piracy had created—the fact that access to the most recent and relevant scholarship was no longer a privilege of rich academic institutions in a few countries of the world (or, for that matter, the exclusive
preserve of academia to begin with)—would simply disappear into thin air. While alternatives within these peripheries quickly filled the gap, it was only through an unlikely set of circumstances that they were able to do so, let alone continue to exist in light of the legal persecution they now also face.