3.802 royalties (28)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Wed, 29 Nov 89 19:17:36 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 802. Wednesday, 29 Nov 1989.

Date: Wed, 29 Nov 89 09:00:00 EST
From: EIEB360@UTXVM
Subject: 3.793 copyright, cont. (64)

This is a response to Bob Kraft's posting of material from Ted Nelson's
_Literary Machines._ I, too, like Nelson's scheme; there's something
elegantly simple and therefore appealing about it. But it does raise
problems-- specifically, the notion that one would have to pay royalties
on the use of absolutely *any* material one quoted or linked-to is
potentially catastrophic for scholarship (and especially humanities
scholarship), unless there are radical changes in the way humanities
research is funded (and the way humanities scholars are paid). There
would, of course, have to be point-to-point linking capabilities (as
there are in Xanadu), so that one could link from one's present document
to specific words or phrases (the way quotation works now) and not just
to an entire book. Otherwise you end up paying royalties for use of a
book when all you wanted was a three-word phrase!

John Slatin (eieib360@utxvm), University of Texas at Austin