permaculture

[Pacific Edge Permaculture + Media <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

Hi Toby and all  the other correspondents exploring this troubling issue...

> From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
> Subject: Re: permaculture trademark alert
> 
> Hi all:
 
> In reply we received a letter from Lisa demanding that I remove roughly 35
> pages of my book that they claimed were infringements because they were
> paraphrased versions of Bill's work, as well as some illustrations. They
> claimed I was in violation of their copyright, and threatened legal action
> if I did not remove all material derived from Bill's work. They said they
> had prevented others from infringing in the past.
> 
> It took a couple more rounds of letters and some escalation of rhetoric (my
> behavior was called "improper") for me to realize that by "material derived
> from" Bill's work, they didn't mean places where I had copied his words
> (because I hadn't done that) but places where I had referred to anything
> mentioned in Bill's books.

> Lisa and Bill sent a list showing that they
> wanted me to remove all reference to guilds, keyhole beds, mandala gardens,
> certain aspects of patterning, herb spirals, Zone and Sector, and a host of
> other concepts basic to permaculture.

Hold on... let me put on my cynical journalist's biases here and ask the
question about where these ideas came into permaculture from...

Guilds  - these are adaptations partly based on traditional (Western and
Eastern agricultures) practices such as intercropping with legumes. The
idea, at least in part,  was not necessarily an invention of any
permaculture designer...  rather, it was seeing the utility of interplanting
mutually supportive combinations of plants where permaculture adapted the
idea.

Keyhole beds - the first mention I saw of this idea was in permaculture, but
couldn't the predecessor to the keyhole bed be seen to be the simple
stepping stones long used in gardening? Judging by some of the keyhole beds
I have seen built, the old fashioned stepping stones leave far more space
for garden productivity.

Mandala gardens  - as far as I am aware, this was not invented by Bill
Mollison but by an Indian development worker attending a permaculture course
in India in the late 1980s. That's how I got the story anyway.

Herb spirals - this may well be a Mollisonian invention.

Zone - I assume you mean the landuse zones theorised by permaculture
designers around a dwelling. Perhaps a predecessor might be the traditional
African patterning around the village dwelling... home garden close to the
house for household sustenance, then field crops  - cash crops  -  just
beyond them? In development work, the idea of the individual house as the
focus around which food producing zones are placed is not always useful...
in Pacific cultures, the village itself might better be considered zone one.

Sector  - do you mean sectors such as sunlight/ wind/ storm and so on Toby?
If so, then the concept has long been in use by landuse planners...  just
ask any architect or landscape designer.


> A quote here from the US Supreme Court seems apt: "The primary objective of
> copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but 'to promote the
> Progress of Science and useful Arts.' To this end, copyright assures authors
> the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build
> freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This . . . is the
> means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art."

Forgive me if I am wrong... but isn't this the means by which permaculture
itself appears to have been formulated? I recall permaculture being
described as 'a synthesis'. Surely that implies that it has used existing
ideas as a starting point and developed them further in the manner you
describe? And, as far as I know, without the legal clearance of others using
those ideas (because it is not necessary in the US or Ausralia).

An instance - the Australian Yoemans water management system for rural
properties... a system that, I believe, might be patented (somebody might
verify that) and that no unauthorised person can use commercially, off their
own property, without permission, because the idea is the intellectual
property of someone else. Yet, we find the Yoemans system promoted in
permaculture design.

Then there's all those techniques borrowed from traditional cultures and
from the development aid sector... alley cropping, water management,
intercropping, various planting patterns, irrigation systems, plant
patterning in time (grain then legume then grain), crop rotation. OK  - they
might not be the  registered property of any individual  but they are used
far and wide in developing nations (and traditionally in the West)... isn't
that borrowing ideas too? I recall, in one of the last pemaculture
International Journal editions, an Indian development agency manager (can't
remember who or in what edition) criticising permaculture for its use of
these traditional agrarian practices yet claiming them for its own.

And let's not forget ideas such as LETS (which was not developed by
permaculturusts as far as I know - I don't recall whether Canadian Michael
Linton, credited with popularising the system, described himself as a
'permaculture practitioner') and community gardens and so on  - all ideas
borrowed by permaculture and erected in the permaculture Pantheon as
components of its integrated design approach.

The fact is that ideas become international property... they are borrowed
from culture to culture, place to place, then adapted and so their use is
broadened and a greater number of people benefit. That's how technologies,
grains, vegetables, utilitarian houssehold objects and so on have spread
over time... that's  how Europe got windmills, Britain got the steam engine,
the Pacific Islands got the sweet potato, Italy got rice, Australia got
computers, New Zealand got possums.

There are really few novel ideas... most worthwhile development appear to be
based on the earlier work of others (ask about Edison and ask too about the
steam engine... check out the history of science and technology)... that's
the nature of the world and it has served us...  humanity...  well.

I think this might be what you were suggesting Toby... 'advancing the
progress of art and science'.

How is permaaculture any different?

...Russ Garyson