The article presents the publishing environment as a commercial ecosystem under threat from the unregulated, “open” nature of the Internet. The DOI is introduced explicitly as a solution to “facilitate commerce in published material on the Internet” and secure intellectual property rights. This positions the primary purpose of publishing infrastructures like the DOI as serving the financial interests of publishers and rights holders, rather than expanding access to knowledge. From its inception, the DOI is imagined as a mechanism to stabilize and protect market relations, not as a tool to democratize scholarly communication. This article highlights how the DOI emerged not as a neutral infrastructure but as a technical artifact designed to solve the commercial anxieties of publishers in the digital era. Its primary concern was securing ownership and revenue streams, embedding market logics directly into the infrastructure of digital scholarship.
