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Hi Hal,<br><br>
Yes, indeed. We have "releases" to be sent to all list
posters from the early list days and will not reproduce their work
without their authorization. I am a stickler for this. As an
artist whose work has been reproduced and distributed without my
permission, I am ever so careful to not do that to others. Further it is
illegal to do so.<br><br>
Thanks for bringing it up though so that everyone will know that even
though we support an open society, we value privacy.<br><br>
Many thanks,<br><br>
Natasha<br><br>
<font size=2><a href="http://www.natasha.cc/">Natasha
</a><a href="http://www.natasha.cc/">Vita-More</a> <br>
Cultural Strategist, Designer <br>
Studies of the Future, University of Houston <br>
President, <a href="http://www.extropy.org/">Extropy Institute</a> <br>
Founder, <a href="http://www.transhumanist.biz/">Transhumanist Arts &
Culture</a> <br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times"><i>Knowledge is the most
democratic source of power.</i> Alvin Toffler <br>
<i>Random acts of kindness... </i>Anne Herbet<br><br>
<br><br>
</font>At 11:53 AM 6/12/2005, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">As I recall, in the early years
of the Extropians list we had a rather<br>
restrictive republication policy. Authors were promised that their
works<br>
would have only limited distribution and would not be published
elsewhere.<br><br>
In retrospect I think this was a mistake, it would have been better
to<br>
treat postings as being for public distribution. I don't think it
would<br>
have really inhibited discussion. But the net of the early 90s was
not<br>
the same as today, the ideas were far more controversial and
"crazy",<br>
so it is perhaps understandable that the list was trying to create a<br>
private coccoon for free discussion.<br><br>
I would imagine that any republication of these messages would
require<br>
getting individual permission from the authors. Where messages
involve<br>
quotes of other people's messages, as is often the case, everyone
involved<br>
would have to agree.<br><br>
For a while I tried running a list which re-posted selected messages<br>
from Extropians. I had to get permission from each author to
allow<br>
his messages to be redistributed. Where they had quotes, I had to
make<br>
sure that each other being quoted had given permission. When I
could<br>
not obtain that, I sometimes hand-edited the quoted portions to
remove<br>
them or substitute a brief summary (copyright applies to
presentation,<br>
not content). Needless to say, it was a lot of work and I did not
keep<br>
it up for more than a few months. But I understood that I had to
follow<br>
such procedures in order to be consistent with the promises that had<br>
been made to authors posting to the list.<br><br>
Unfortunately these limitations will make it difficult to have a
full<br>
public process for choosing and evaluating messages. Not only
would<br>
you have to secure permission for the messages you mean to publish,<br>
you also have to get permission for the potentially much larger body
of<br>
messages that you might want to open up for comment and
consideration<br>
in terms of selecting the finalists.<br><br>
I'd be curious to hear about what your plans are for getting around
this<br>
difficulty in terms of publishing a "best of the list" from the
early<br>
days. I do think this would be a tremendously valuable and
interesting<br>
picture of the development of transhumanism as it first hit the net,<br>
and I hope you can find a way to make the many creative and
stimulating<br>
postings available to a wider audience.<br><br>
Hal<br>
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http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat</a> </blockquote>
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