[Buddha-l] Useful for Enlightenment?

[Jamie Hubbard]

Franz Metcalf wrote:
> Gang,
>
> Many thanks for the appreciation of the Journal of Global Buddhism.  
> There's a saying common on the net that information wants to be free.  
> This for two reasons. 1) It is so very easy to put up information in  
> easily and freely copiable form. 2) Information, especially scholarly  
> information, exists precisely to be expanded and applied; these  
> actions can be achieved in direct proportion to the extent of that  
> information's freedom. The JGB: freeing information since 2000. <http://www.globalbuddhism.org 
>   
I have made the decision to put everything I write out on the net for 
free, excluding the few things left in the pipeline with paper 
publishers. While I hate to see somebody put out of work, it *really* 
irritates me to work w/ academic publishers these days. The writer 
pretty much has to everything from camera-ready copy to making an index 
and there is so little real copy-editing done that it is a joke (I know 
that there are some delightful exceptions, e.g., the BDK folks). And 
then, given tax rules and whatnot, the work is out of print in a year or 
two. Tenure in the academy is the only feeble reason left for this 
situation, and that is changing as more universities recognize the web 
as a publishing venue.
> By contrast, I just had the discouraging experience of wanting to  
> recommend a chapter I wrote some years ago to a teacher of an  
> introduction to Buddhism course. But that chapter is not free. It is  
> bound into the paper chains of a book that no one wants to buy. I  
> *have* the pdf on my computer, but do not believe I can legally share  
> it (certainly not with a class of students, anyway). They are left to  
> the wilds of the internet and my information rots in its pulpy prison.
>   
NO, you have an option: put stuff up on the web for your class behind a 
password-access for students in the class only. It is (virtually) the 
same as putting something on reserve in the library. At my school most 
folks have moved from expensive course-packs of articles, etc. to 
Blackboard, Moodle, or one of the other such systems that allow this 
approach.

Jamie