&quot;I paid, before hand, to have a movie created, but was never allowed to watch it (for free)&quot; isn&#x27;t actually all that great a moral justification for pirating a movie, either.  But in the case of creating a movie, if I paid to make it happen, first the creators would probably invite me to the first screening, and second, even if they didn&#x27;t, I could afford to buy a ticket.<p>Scientific research, on the other hand, is paid for, not by &quot;me&quot;, but by &quot;us&quot; - by the pooled tax money of millions of people.  I, as an individual, do <i>not</i> have the money to &quot;buy a ticket&quot; to all the research that we, as a group, have paid for.<p>What <i>really</i> needs to happen is that we, the taxpayers, put pressure on the government to insist that all government-supported research publish the results for free online somewhere.