The article fundamentally equates knowledge with owned content, arguing that protecting and managing this ownership is critical for sustaining the publishing industry. Knowledge circulation is not imagined as a public good but as a transaction governed by the rules of intellectual property and commerce. The DOI embodies a worldview that naturalizes the commodification of knowledge. Its very purpose is to attach identifiers that facilitate the management, sale, and tracking of intellectual property, rather than to foster open knowledge sharing. This legacy continues to shape how digital scholarship is valued and exchanged.
