This is yet another reason why I love the internet. Yesterday, I wrote some ideas about a book I came across by Siva Vaidhyanathan, who teaches at NYU. This morning, I woke up to find that he had discovered them and left a thoughtful reply on my site. I’m going to duplicate them here, because my comment system is prone to deleting older comments.

Thanks for your comments about my book, The Anarchist in the Library.

Alas, I can’t offer the book free over the Internet on a Creative Commons license. My publisher owns the rights in all media. That’s a standard term of book contracts. Larry Lessig’s book was the exception. He had much more bargaining power than I did. So he insisted. His publisher agreed. Mine would not.

I think you are on to something about the limitations of the language of power in my book. I will think some more about it. My first book was clearly about creativity in the micro. So I wanted to take the issues to a higher plane with this one. I also wanted to distinguish my arguments from Lessig’s.

I hope you feel compelled to read a copy of the book from your library. That’s the best Open Source model of distribution we have.

Thanks for taking the time to read what I wrote and comment Siva. I appreciate it. I look forward to checking out your work in greater detail. As to them not allowing free online versions, talk about oligarchic control! I would have made a copy of the book “accidentally” available in my file-sharing folder - dastardly as that may be. I certainly find it ironic that the “anarchist” will actually have to go to the “library” to read your book.