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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Intellectual property
  • Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:16:33 -0500

Evan Schoepke wrote:

If the principals of permaculture can not evolve to accomadate the needs of
people *willing to learn* from various backgrounds and income levels in a
very substantial way then permaculture *will not* avert a vast ecological
and social collapse. To be clear I have *never* stolen anything from Bill
Mollison and have in fact have given as much time and *money* and I can to
the permie cause. I didn't even scan the Permaculture Designers Manual
myself but merely promoted a link I found to a free copy. The reason I did
this is because I do know that there are people from all over the world with
less resources who would put it to good use (*see christophe's comment*). I
expect to get support and criticism but most importantly I expect that
permaculturalist of all people will at the very least *begin to
question*the "business as usual" logic that is destroying our planet.

This is "business as usual"
(an excerpt from Lisa Mollison's letter to you):

"We try to keep the costs of all our books to a minimum but there are costs associated with printing, publishing and distributing our titles, and if the books don’t generate any income I’m sure you could foresee the outcome for Tagari Publications and the Permaculture Institute.

Bill Mollison is now 82 years old, he still writes, teaches and supports many organisations. Bill has dedicated much of his life to this cause and is a valuable entity to all involved, but without finances Bill would not be able to continue with his teaching, writing and community assistance."

Do you have a problem with that?

> If the principals of permaculture can not evolve to accomadate the
> needs of people *willing to learn* from various backgrounds and income > levels in a very substantial way then permaculture *will not* avert a > vast ecological and social collapse.

If the principals of permaculture can not evolve to support guerrila publishing in its effort to distribute for free the copyrighted works of
dedicated writers doing their best to survive personally and educate the permaculture community while at the same time encouraging personal fiscal responsibility by saving money to purchase their own copies of their works and starting their own lending libraries so others in their community can benefit from their books then permaculture will not avert a vast ecological and societal collapse.

Anything wrong with that picture?

P.S. I invite anyone on this list serve (even folks who wish someone sued my
pants off) to write and contribute to www.punkrockpermaculture.com. Thank
you, and keep up the great work.

That's a good thing, Evan. Keep it going. www.punkrockpermaculture.com is a fascinating, worthwhile site, a breath of fresh air. I found many new and interesting things there including Scribd (did they ask the permission of the author of the Roman Cooking book to publish it for free online? and the book by Rain?). How about starting a publishing collective there; encourage your readers to contribute to new books on permaculture and publish them online for free or for profit (use PayPal
to recieve payments); if they get pirated then you will see how sales fare.

LL




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