Collin Vs. Blog

Excellent point about the proprietary systems. I realize you're talking about accessibility here (from the article you linked):

Those who use open systems and adhere to open standards when creating electronic literature have a much better chance that the format of their literary works will be supported, or decipherable, in the future. The small group of people in charge of a closed system or standard may lose interest and stop developing software, or the small group may change the system or standard without warning, so that older works of electronic literature no longer work on new platforms.

You may copy 10 text selections to the clipboard every 10 days.

You may print 10 pages every 10 days.

You may use the Read Aloud button to listen to this book.

For Aristotle, the publisher was considerably less generous:

You may not copy any text selections to the clipboard.

You may not print any pages.

You may use the Read Aloud button to listen to this book.

Although translations are copyrightable, as in the case of Aristotle, both of these works are in the public domain, yet the architecture of the technology is inhibiting our use of these works.

Clancy, I think it's legit to bring IP into this, bc I think they're closely related. This may be a weakness on my part, but when I read IP or open source stuff, my own context for it tends to be present tense (what can I do with it *now*?). One of the issues that this raises for me is the question of what (or whether) we can do something with it in 10 years. Marjorie talked about Uncle Buddy's Fun House, an early ht written in HyperCard. Apple doesn't support HC anymore, but at the same time, they won't release it, and that makes this fairly early example of the genre almost inaccessible.

You may print 10 pages every 10 days? WTF?

cgb

Yep. Who came up with that, I wonder? Anyway, thanks for pointing out (to me, at least) yet another of the stakes of the DRM debate. I first became interested in the politics of archiving after reading Wendy Sharer's essay in Rhetorical Bodies titled "Disintegrating Bodies of Knowledge: Historical Material and Revisionary Histories of Rhetoric." If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

I've skimmed the collection, but don't remember whether or not I read the Sharer essay--thanks!

As I've been thinking about this, it connects for me as well with the recent disappearances of IA and Chun. Blogrolls are easy enough to fix, but permalinks buried amidst hundreds of archived entries? Not so much. And as more academics start blogging, even our mobility becomes an issue if we avail ourselves of the benefits of school servers (like I do)...

cgb