I agree that science cannot truly be considered open while the results are essentially embargoed in highly expensive journals. The typical going rate for a single article is $35, which made sense when they photocopied and snail mailed to you, but is about 2 orders of magnitude overpriced for internet access. I find that when I do drag myself off to a physical library, I typically have to scan through 10 to 20 papers to find 1 that is worth reading in detail. The abstract is typically useless for determining the quality of the paper. Now do the sums, to find a couple of usable papers you will need to look through 20 to 40 papers, which at $35 a pop is going to cost you $700 to $1400. This meets no definition of open that I am aware of, and is a significant barrier to information access for a non university scientist. Even when you go to a physical library these days, you'l find they typically have only a small number of the journals you find yourself needing. This is because the majority of professionals already do all their journal research online.

The second law of thermodynamics is unfortunately the supreme law. Murphy's law is just a special case of the second law.

How hard is it to write a Lua script to reject logins by users who aren't on the whitelist? I think you're ok.