Although US taxpayers spend more than $50,000,000,000 a year to support scientific research, they have no inherent right to access publications arising from this research. Instead, these papers are the rightful property of scientific publishers on account of their having leased software used to oversee peer review and convert Word documents into PDFs. American interests are not served by providing free access to the latest scientific discoveries to patients, caregivers, students, teachers, researchers and entrepreneurs. Rather they are best served by continuing to allow publishing conglomerates based on the soil of our European allies to reap massive profits charging American taxpayers billions of dollars to access the results of research they paid for.