permaculture

["Nicholas Roberts, Permaculture.coop" <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>]

nearly all of the value created in online publishing of content is captured
by Google, via its Search + adwords marketplace, there is talk of making
Google and other search engines paying a content royalty.

In my view Google has privatised, monopolised a public utility i.e search
and should be regulated, taxed etc

copyright law and enforcement is such now that you could report a
plagiarist, illegal copier and get them shut-down by the Feds..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act>no doubt,
there are many vested interests who would be quite happy to "regulate" the
weak and fragile permaculture publishing industry, media ecology.. just like
food cooperatives and small organic producers are being crushed by
compliance costs so to will small publishers, bloggers etc

its not just young people, its poor people who want access to information, I
would remind the US folks on this list that during the development of the US
it ignored the intellectual property of Europe and Asia ...

even the mega-media corporations are having a hard time making money through
publishing online and such small-time backyard operators such as Rupert
Murdoch complain about it, and are forcing the market towards an online
subscription model

its interesting the Tim O'Reilly, publisher and populariser of open-source
software sells books and online resources, see the excellent Safari Online
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/

there is no media product that cannot be digitised. Period. books, magazine,
radio, video, etc... nothing.

once again, there seems to be a generational gap on this list... old
rent-seeking permies looking for safe retirement in their gardens and those
of us left to fight the climate war

12. *Reality Check*

Like Evan, who I respect, I have been trying to get the International
Permaculture Network to adjust to the realities of the 21st century; sudden,
abrupt cllimate change, globalisation, neoliberalism and the Internet. Evans
publishing of the PDF is important as a political gesture but its irrelevant
in terms of effecting sales of the book. Reading PDFs online is not a great
experience <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html>, and you would have
to be pretty desperate (and poor) to do so. Those that can afford to buy the
book, will. But sadly, many people in the West, and most people in the
South, and that includes those who need them cannot afford them.


*12. Free Love vs Climate War*

When babyboomers went back to the land things where very different from
today.

Free love, cheap land, free health care, free education, plenty of work,
relatively little debt. Optimism for the future.

Compared with the precarity of todays younger permies, where jobs are
scarce, debt is high, education and healthcare are expensive, land is
unaffordable.

Today many are attracted to permaculture as a kind of survivalism school, a
way to live through the comingClimate
War<http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/projects/climatewar>.
Not exactly the Free Love era is it ? Lovelock Climate war could kill nearly
all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone
Age<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/29/climate-war-lovelock>

In the past cooperation was a kind of dream, an ideal. Today its a
requirement for survivial.

Pat Murphy’s Book, Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and
Climate Change <http://www.communitysolution.org/plancbook.html>

*In Conclusion, a Call for Cooperation*

I am personally grateful for the super hard work, creativity and dogged,
never-say-die attitude of the Permaculture Pioneers. Like plant ecology, the
Pioneers may be loners, spikey, tough, and pretty hard company, but they
have had to adapt and survive in extremely hard conditions.

The organic farming, perennial polyculture, community supported agriculture
pioneering work has been done.

We need to go back to that 1983 PDC talk of Mollisons and work-out a
Permaculture.coop project. In my view its the organisational aspects that
have held the international permaculture network back.

Kirstie and myself have been exploring the organisational level of
permaculture evolution.

We hope others might join with us in the research and development of such a
Permaculture.coop.

Anyone interested please get in touch with us below.

cheers

ps: an open letter to copyright holders, how much to make your collection a
global commons ? how much money do you want so we can pool and open source
ALL of the permaculture content ? making it freely available online ?


Nicholas Roberts & Kirstie Stramler

Australia 02 8003 6993
Denmark 36 96 49 02

USA Ph 310 598 2989
USA Cell 310 402 3513

Permaculture Cooperative R&D project
skype permaculturecoop
email permaculturecoop@gmail.com
--
news http://news.permaculture.coop
groups http://permaculturegroups.org
plans http://gaiapermaculture.com
video http://www.Permaculture.TV
blogs http://blogs.permaculture.coop
--
http://twitter.com/permaculturetv
http://www.youtube.com/user/permaculturecoop
http://vimeo.com/permaculture

so, the reality is I would suggest to anyone publishing online that they
consider a tiered model, a commercial open-source model

use a creative commons license like Non commercial share alike,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses#Original_licenses
attribution of authors is required in all licenses

if you a releasing a video, put water marks and donation and buy this video
marks throughout the video, see The Real News or The Corporation

ultimately, we need to pool the permaculture resources and create a value
add, i.e. a convenient, single-login, modest cost, aggregator of
permaculture books, magazines, videos etc etc like Safari

as I have said before, Live Together or Die Alone

http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/2009/11/17/live-together-or-die-alone-on-copyright-cooperation/