[Slowhand] Archive of AG Site

[Richard Millard]

I agree that we ought to respect Mark's work and be sensitive to his wishes on this - so, if he were to come forward and say "stop" I would have to give that serious consideration [but see below].
   
  Absent any word from him, I'm not sure I see the problem.  Mark put his site up there for all to use.  It's free.  The "distribution" by DVD isn't any broader than the distribution that occurs just from the site being up every day - in fact it's got to be narrower.
   
  I know that even with a DVD on the shelf it's going to be much easier for me to use the live site just by clicking on my bookmark, and I suspect that most of us will do the same - the DVD will serve mainly as a backup.  Is there really any objection to people having a backup in case the site does go dark?  Are we really doing anything other than using Mark's work as he intended it to be used?
   
  As a matter of philosophy, I'm not sure how far authorial control should really go.  If an author decides to recall and burn all the copies of his books, is it morally wrong for those who have copies to keep them, or even distribute them, so that the work of art is not lost?  J.D. Salinger went AWOL for a number of years a while back - if he had sent out a press release asking everyone to burn their copies of "Catcher in the Rye," would we have been morally obligated to honor his wishes, or is it fair to view a work of art as having a life independent of its creator?  Same issue with a musician, of course.  We all collect "unauthorized" recordings, so that seems to me to imply an answer.....

Richard

		
---------------------------------
 
 What are the most popular cars? Find out at Yahoo! Autos 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/slowhand/attachments/20060222/dc627aff/attachment.html