Debate! Open Access for the Public

Go to Mimi's place and state your position:

For a long time, if you wanted to read up on science news or get background information for research, you had to hope that the media got it right, have a subscription to a few journals ( there are thousands though, so you are missing out), or be lucky enough to work at an institute/organization that gives you access to journals online and has a few (hundred) bound copies. Before legislation was passed to make NIH funded research available to the public after a year, no one really knew what was going on in the world of research and development.

This sounds great for some, but for scientists and certain publishing houses, this is a topic of much contention. In fact, OA was in recent legislation again! So I guess the question up for discussion this week is...do you think research should be made available to the public for free or is this going to destroy tiny publishing houses and let the big ones float? How will this affect genetics testing and privacy of subjects? How do you feel about open access?