Editorial

During a panel discussion at LFSCon (see p. 5), L. Neil Smith said "We need a new ownership paradigm [for intellectual property]." It seems likely that one of the 21st century's great conflicts will be over copyright law. Corporate owners of valuable intellectual property support longer lasting copyright; many academics oppose it, as a barrier to the free discussion their community is based on; and many people use the Internet as a tool for transferring information without regard to the claims of its owners.

Historically, copyright is of recent origin; it developed only after the invention of the printing press. In the era of hand copying—by medieval monks, for example—there was no concept of copyright. The printing press meant that large numbers of copies could be produced and sold, with a significant capital investment that had to to protected. Now, with photocopying, computers, and the Internet, large numbers of copies can be produced and exchanged with only minimal capital. The ease of copying makes it harder to produced an income stream from intellectual property, as the Napster case made clear. Whether it will still be practical to enforce intellectual property rights in their current form is uncertain. It's hard not to feel divided sympathies in this situation. On one hand, libertarians support property rights; on the other hand, file sharing involves exactly the kind of decentralized voluntary cooperation that libertarians admire. Smith's call for a new paradigm is well timed.

With this issue of Prometheus, we take another step into the electronic age by setting an explicit policy for publication of articles on our Web site (see below). According to a recent legal decision, authors who submit material to print publications do not automatically grant the right to republish the material on the Web; the author's consent to such republication is required. The Libertarian Futurist Society has an active Web site and wishes to make previously published material available there. Starting with this issue, submission of articles will indicate consent to such use.

Notice the wording of the statement "a nonexclusive license to publish." Neither Prometheus nor the Libertarian Futurist Society owns the articles that appear here; we claim copyright to protect our rights and our authors', but once an issue mails, the bylined material belongs to its authors. We retain a continuing right to publish your material on our Web page; you also have the right to publish it yourself elsewhere. As a courtesy, we request that you hold it back from publication until the next issue of Prometheus mails. or three months pass, whichever happens first. By doing this, you help us maintain the value of this newsletter.