Re: "Against Intellectual Property"

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote:
> >
> > Those of you who are not Slashdot readers might not be aware of
> > this link,
> >
> > http://danny.oz.au/free-software/advocacy/against_IP.html
> >
> > "Against Intellectual Property," chapter of a book,
> > "Information Liberation," by Brian Martin.
>
> I presume Brian is going to put this book on the internet for free,
> and doesn't need any income from it. It's nice to have people able
> to do this, and I'n certainly not against philanthropy, including
> yours. I don't believe, however, that it's necessarily good in the
> long run to have books written only by those with independent incomes
> who don't need to be paid for their work and prefer not to be paid
> for their work. Rich diletanttes have plenty of opportunity to
> publish now, with all those vanity presses. Or, as Henry Ford did,
> they can even buy their own newspapers to disseminate their views.
> I don't think it's ever been shown that rich people who don't need
> to be paid for their writing necessarily write the best books. To
> date, it rather appears that they don't.

Pat,

Well, I'm not rich and I don't have a patron. I don't know if you are rich are not, but you seem to have the power to disseminate your views without much expense in your email to us.

If you wish to conduct an ad hominem argument, you might need to know that I am disabled and am proud to be able to contribute something to society in this way.  

> I think the inconsistency in your theses

I posted the hyperlink so anyone who is interested in the issue of copyright (and I assume that means all the readers of this list) could read it if they liked and respond to the provocative work.

I have my own ideas which are not controlled by what I read there. Martin's anarchist views are one extreme. I don't believe you have refuted them with this argument.

> is that you want to maintain a capitalist society (and even, I
> suspect, have the opportunity to make a bit of nasty capitalist
> profit yourself), but you want one class of workers -- authors
> -- denied compensation for their work.

Not at all. I pay for the books and magazines and newspapers I read. I heartily approve of authors bypassing big publishers and selling their works directly to readers, as for example Stephen King with his new work, "The Plant." See:

     http://www.stephenking.com/downloads/

> Why involuntary servitude for authors, but not for, say, farmers,
> doctors, publishers, or truck drivers? Sometimes you even seem to
> be arguing that you yourself could make more money if authors were
> to be compelled to take less. It's all very confusing, and I wish
> you'd get these threads sorted out.

In the Vietnam War, I was a conscientious objector. I fulfilled my duty to my country by working in a hospital. I liked the idea of public service so much I spent the next 20 years there.

If you wish to debate my views, you may read my little work, "13 Points for the Public Domain," at

     http://www.law.nyu.edu/ili/conferences/

I think you will find I believe in copyright and its utility in this age of the Internet. There were many distinguished scholars at Yochai Benkler's conference, and there was great dialogue. All but two ended up agreeing with my thesis.

My views on copyright have nothing to do with views on capitalism. My proposal for an Intellectual Property Conservancy is intended to provide a voluntary solution within capitalism for many of the problems the new copyright laws have created.

Eric Eldred
<eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> Received on Sat Jul 29 2000 - 15:19:09 GMT