[extropy-chat] Extropy: "Best of the List"

[Natasha Vita-More]

Hi Hal,

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.

Thanks for bringing it up though so that everyone will know that even 
though we support an open society, we value privacy.

Many thanks,

Natasha

<http://www.natasha.cc/>Natasha <http://www.natasha.cc/>Vita-More
Cultural Strategist, Designer
Studies of the Future, University of Houston
President, <http://www.extropy.org/>Extropy Institute
Founder, <http://www.transhumanist.biz/>Transhumanist Arts & Culture

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.  Alvin Toffler
Random acts of kindness... Anne Herbet



At 11:53 AM 6/12/2005, you wrote:
>As I recall, in the early years of the Extropians list we had a rather
>restrictive republication policy.  Authors were promised that their works
>would have only limited distribution and would not be published elsewhere.
>
>In retrospect I think this was a mistake, it would have been better to
>treat postings as being for public distribution.  I don't think it would
>have really inhibited discussion.  But the net of the early 90s was not
>the same as today, the ideas were far more controversial and "crazy",
>so it is perhaps understandable that the list was trying to create a
>private coccoon for free discussion.
>
>I would imagine that any republication of these messages would require
>getting individual permission from the authors.  Where messages involve
>quotes of other people's messages, as is often the case, everyone involved
>would have to agree.
>
>For a while I tried running a list which re-posted selected messages
>from Extropians.  I had to get permission from each author to allow
>his messages to be redistributed.  Where they had quotes, I had to make
>sure that each other being quoted had given permission.  When I could
>not obtain that, I sometimes hand-edited the quoted portions to remove
>them or substitute a brief summary (copyright applies to presentation,
>not content).  Needless to say, it was a lot of work and I did not keep
>it up for more than a few months.  But I understood that I had to follow
>such procedures in order to be consistent with the promises that had
>been made to authors posting to the list.
>
>Unfortunately these limitations will make it difficult to have a full
>public process for choosing and evaluating messages.  Not only would
>you have to secure permission for the messages you mean to publish,
>you also have to get permission for the potentially much larger body of
>messages that you might want to open up for comment and consideration
>in terms of selecting the finalists.
>
>I'd be curious to hear about what your plans are for getting around this
>difficulty in terms of publishing a "best of the list" from the early
>days.  I do think this would be a tremendously valuable and interesting
>picture of the development of transhumanism as it first hit the net,
>and I hope you can find a way to make the many creative and stimulating
>postings available to a wider audience.
>
>Hal
>_______________________________________________
>extropy-chat mailing list
>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat



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