You can of course sell what you like as long as the great washed and unwashed desire to buy it. In order to avoid any doubt I am, of course, only referring to that which the law and m'learned friends would approve of. (Thank god for that. We don't want the peelers round stomping their big boots on the antimacassars and the like looking for contraband and the stuff you should have turned over to the Receiver of Wreck years ago... Ed)
In an article in the Grauniad he points out that it is not possible to buy a digital copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). This raises a number of interesting questions. I was struck again by the fact that the interweb has changed forever things we have taken for granted as being part of the fabric of society - You sell... I buy - and changed them in ways we do not recognise or see where they will leave us.
But the point is that we have sleepwalked into a new way of accessing some very ancient tools. Commercial decisions married to the lawyerly norm of asking for the world, the moon, and your first-born in rental agreements have birthed a new, non-negotiable relationship between people who live and die by words and the lexicographers whose work serves them. A university whose name is synonymous with the perpetual archiving of books is now telling scholars that their crucial references can never be their property, and that their ongoing use of those works is subject to continuous monitoring and indefinite retention.I particularly like the idea of a lien on your first-born.
Have a gander at it and of course remember Aaron Swartz.
(Glad to see you back. Have a good break? Weather fine? Relatives and young thriving? Get much reading done?
Now about the price of coal and the vital editorial work I do for this enterprize - any chance of a sub...Ed)
