Dan, We could get into a long, exhausting discussion about intellectual property and whether it can be "owned: or not. Companies have spent time and money creating a brand name, and if they don't defend it, it gets passed to common usage (examples: Kleenex, Xerox, Frigidaire, just to name a few) and loses its meaning.
My question to you: who makes the decision about "buying and selling the rights to a name for something that we should hold in common"? (quoted from your paragraph, below) Who is the "we" in that sentence? And where does the "should" imperative come from? Since when does someone's (or some company's) work automatically become a public utility free of rights and ownership? Sounds a lot like communism. Melvyl Dui devised the system. Forest Press published the DDC beginning in 1911 and continuing until today. OCLC bought Forest Press in 1988 and has continued to update, improve, and publish it ever since. Where in that 92 years did it become public domain? It didn't. The way I see it, there are no real villains in this comedy -- only some really stupid actors. The hotel owner should have answered his letters or picked up the phone. OCLC should have handled this episode with a lot more finesse. Would have saved a lot of hassle all around. My final comment relates to your argument that we should not appear to be selling a product, but we should appear to be providing a service. I disagree. Information is a commodity and has value. As Daniel Stuhlman has pointed out in other discussions, there is a market for expertise and knowledge. Sometimes it is paid for directly, in cash. Sometimes it is paid for through taxation and government. But information has value or it would not be useful or desirable. Altruism -- that is, "offering a [library] service for the good of the community" (again, quoting you) is a nice and generous gesture, but it is decidedly NOT an obligation. Ted ========================================================================== HaSafran - The Electronic Forum of the Association of Jewish Libraries Submissions for HaSafran, send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org/
