No one would be objecting to these things if they included clauses like, "None of these provisions should be interpreted to undermine fair use, or public domain." But, those phrases will *never* appear in such documents, because the intent is to either undermine those things, or obfuscate the intent sufficiently that they can. Heck, we already have the bloody supreme court in the US dropping feces on the process, by actually suggesting that someone can take public domain content and re-copyright it. How the #@$$@# is that supposed to work exactly? And, if the same clowns couldn't get taken to court for the number of cases of their own secretaries, etc., using copyrighted material on their own websites, and the like, while totally blind to it, they would be pushing to have fair use denied too. After all, its all about the money changing hands, not what is best for civilization.

Ancient world - One idiot decides the Library of Alexandria isn't worth anything, since anything in it can also be found in their magic book, so has it burned down.

Modern world - One nut buys up the whole library of congress, under the, "its no longer public domain, I copyrighted it", and has its contents burned, because, "Its my property, I can do what I want with it."

Same bloody difference, same result to the public well being. And, the only reason it won't happen, is purely because you can't overcharge someone for the "ashes" of things that they want to read, or need to understand their jobs. If you could, most of our civilization could go up in smoke, with the first crazy that managed to buy it.

Strangely, at one time, both sides of the political spectrum thought that ordinary people having access to free, and presumably accurate, information was "important". Now, if money isn't changing hands, its not "real", and no one cares of the "primary" source for it is 12 different web sites, by 12 different groups of people, with 12 different interpretations of reality, of which only one is accurate at all, and it *might be*, depending on the subject, the least popular source on the subject. I mean.. How many people likely look up medical information on quack websites, self help sites, the website of their favorite magazine, or even Wikipedia, which is not always accurate, instead of even **knowing** about Pubmed? A site that publishers of medical/scientific journals would like to see end, because they give out, to doctors, and researchers, for free, what they want them to use research money, and money used to treat patients, to *buy* through their expensive journals, instead. If it wasn't necessary to have them, as a means to show that one's research was actually reviewed, and found at least plausible, by other professionals, no one in their right mind would want the journals to exist.

Frankly, though, they might be outliving their usefulness, purely due to the number of cases of bad information making it through the filters on some of the lower end ones, and the fact that anti-science groups have been playing "cargo cult" journalism, and inventing various fake journals for themselves, to be published in.

And, that is what it is, really, cargo cultism. The act to replicating the surface, the "appearance" of science, or science journalism, using similar words, and gestures, etc., to "conjure" legitimacy. Just like the islander cargo cultists couldn't make planes, or build radios, etc., but imagined that those things would all reappear, after WWII, if they just build runways, and constructed towers, and produced the "appearance" of the things that existed, when those places where landing points for aircraft, military personnel and the things they brought with them. And, sadly, when it comes to glossy magazines, most people can't tell the difference, any more than the natives of those islands did.