May 1st - Democracy is about access to knowledge and solidarity how we share it.

MAY 1ST vintage propaganda
poster Soviet Union 1921

On the occasion of May 1st, I will write about equality and ensuring all people have equal right to information.

Democracy is about access to knowledge and solidarity how we share it.

Yesterday I wrote about copyright law and the exceptions enable libraries to lend physical books to the public, the law just does not apply when the books are digital.

See: The future of books and publishing in a digital ag...

But unfortunately there are many opportunities to prevent libraries possibility of lending to the public.

I found an example of a digital material can not be borrowed at the library. Currently these are the works of Marx and Engels, therefore it is worthwhile to look at, just on Labour Day.

In The Chronicle April 29 you could read an Article that "Readers of Marx and Engels Decry Publishers Assertion of Copyright"

"In a capitalist world, even a radical publishing house devoted to the works of socialist thinkers has to make money to survive. That’s the argument being used by Lawrence & Wishart, a London-based publisher, to explain why it has asked the Marxists Internet Archive,a volunteer-run online collection of socialist writers’ works, to remove from the website copyrighted material from the publisher’sMarx Engels Collected Works by April 30.

The publisher says it wants to market a digital edition to libraries in order to keep itself in business. While the Marxists Internet Archive is not contesting the company’s right to enforce its copyright, news of its request set off an outcry from some observers and supporters of the archive.

"If Lawrence & Wishart still considers itself a socialist institution, its treatment of the archive is uncomradely at best, and arguably much worse; while if the press is now purely a capitalist enterprise, its behavior is merely stupid," wrote the columnist and critic Scott McLemee in an April 24 post on the Crooked Timber blog.

More than 4,000 people have now signed a petition on Change.org calling for an end to copyright on Marx and Engels’s work. "Privatization of Marx and Engels’ writings is like getting a trademark for the words ‘socialism’ or ‘communism,’" the petition says."

But you can read the entire article here if you will know more

The article ends with an amusing observation

"Still, it’s "unfortunate that a left-wing publishing house would want to restrict access to the works of a major left-wing thinker to those affiliated with a university or college library that can afford to purchase L&W’s new digital edition," said Mr. Sperber professor of history at the University of Missouri at Columbia and a noted expert on Karl Marx. "Hegel, to name someone who was a big influence on Marx, once described a tragedy as ‘a conflict of two rights.’ That seems to sum up the situation."