The second reason that scholarly societies have not been vocal in the copyright in an electronic age conversation is that the challenges of the electronic future are paralyzing. Consider the dilemma in which these societies find themselves. They are charitable educational institutions that are committed to the free interchange of ideas and the production and use of scholarship. At the same time, to survive as organizations, these groups must generate an adequate stream of revenue. Typically, this revenue derives from individual and institutional dues.
Individuals are willing to pay dues in part in order to receive the societies' journals.
In addition, libraries pay even higher fees so that their patrons can have access to those journals. In the pre-electronic past, the fact that the library had a journal did not impede individuals on campus from subscribing to the same journal, probably because of the convenience, for example, of not having to trudge over to the library to search for a particular issue. Under this scenario a political scientist, for example, no longer needs her own copy of the American Political Science Review . Instead she can call it up and, even better, search it any time that she wants. As a result, because she does not need her own copy of the Review , she then has less reason to join the organization that publishes the journal.