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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@bellsouth.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Information monopoly
  • Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:33:33 -0500

Alex McCausland wrote:

<><><>
Well we don’t have ANY “high speed” connections here in Ethiopia, especially not farmers, but have you never heard of a thing called EXTENSION. What if I download the manual (even on my dial-up at $0.007/minute) and print of 1 copy then photo copy it 100 times. I can then distribute this to 100 different organisations that work with farmers around the country. None of them may have been interested to buy the DM for $100, but one or two may actually leaf through and get interested, then we may stand a chance of getting some PC implemented on the ground, with illiterate peasant gladly taking on the (new) Gospel of PC and cooperative design. Do you think the missionaries that turned up in Konso 50 years ago could have been successful if they had to pay Jesus $100 for every copy of the Bible they used!? (Could any of those peasants who now spend their Sunday mornings screaming Allelujah at their empty fields actually read the bible? Maybe they
will spend Monday doing cooperative design sessions so their fields can be full, with a free DM) According to your philosophy, in order to do this I should have to pay $10,000 to Tigari (assuming $100 per copy would cover it) instead of $25 for photocopying. Not only that I have to wait a month for the books to turn up from Tazmania. Now Bill may live a good old frugal lifestyle, that’s not the point, the point is that it’s Permaculture, not himself, which really matters. I don’t care about tigari, if I can get a village to feed itself. For the same $10,000 we can give a full PDC to to 10 school teachers and implement a follow up program in 5 schools with 64 days of consultancy monitoring and feed-back in each school. In other-words we can take a big step towards generating food security for 5 communities. I don’t see why Tigari should take that money. Yes Bill wrote the book, but what is the USE of the book if it’s only there for the white upper-middles of the anglo-saxon empire.
www.permalodge.org

To reduce the depletion of Tagari's income by not having copies available to download for free from the Web by any and everybody, including those not in need (especially those who can easily afford to buy the book but are too cheap to spend the money) why don't groups/projects like yours just purchase one copy of the book then scan and print copies yourselves for distribution to the extension agencies to hand out to farmers and homesteaders. You have spent about $100 plus cost of reprinting. Better yet why not collaborate with other international groups to collectively appeal to Tagari to make the DM available from Google Library which I think is the best option for Bil, by far. If he does not want to do that now he can always consider this option for some future time. At least you will have voiced your wishes to Tagari and through this they might take more seriously addressing the need of low income peoples around the world to have access to this great work by making a digital copy available online, hopefully through the resources Google offers.

> www.permalodge.org

That's a fascinating website and you are doing great work. I hope something
can be done to make the DM and related works
available to your constituency and others in Ethiopia.








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