I agree that the issue of free usage should be up for discussion. On the one
hand, I support the completely free access to any and all information which
can be publicly accessed via the internet. The whole discussion of
intellectual property and copyright which concentrates on the maintaining
and perpetuating of existing power bases is wonderfully disrupted by the
internet. I would like to continue to contribute to this disruption by
offering any and all materials I may personally generate free to anyone who
would like to make use of them, for commercial gain or not. I'll reap a
return in other ways. On the other hand, it is not fair of me to expect that
others should feel the same way. Basically, it boils down to issues of
commercial usage and some forms of acknowledgement, the value of which
varies for different 'authors'. There are models we could follow. For
example, the 'nettime' discussion list, which is a closed list (which makes
it different from ours), places a small policy statement at the bottom of
each post which hits the list... as follows:
--- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.deThe on-line publishers at Johns Hopkins have a more developed policy in place to try and address aspects of this issue as well at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/publishers_statement.html -- it should be noted though that there is a difference between our list and an electronic article. But, this also brings up the issue of the articles listed on the 'dance and technology zone' pages.
Since this has an impact on all of us who post to this discussion, it would be good to hear what others feel about it. It does strike me that Johannes' 'trancedance' posts are more like a 'series of articles' (we are up to number V aren't we?) on a specific topic and generated primarily by him... which make it different from some of the other forms of collaborative dialogue which are taking place here. So, maybe, JOhannes, you could include with such material your own 'copyright' policies?
Regards,
Scott ----------------------------------| Scott deLahunta and Susan Rethorst Writing Research Associates, NL Sarphatipark 26-3, 1072 PB Amsterdam, NL tel: +31 (0)20 662 1736 fax: +31 (0)20 470 1558 email: sdela@ahk.nl http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra (WRITING RESEARCH ASSOCIATES) http://www.art.net/~dtz (DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY ZONE )