Issue for 1995-06-21. Copyright ) Spunk Press, 1995. Permission is allowed to copy this newsletter freely.

THE SPUNKNIK
State of the Collective Bulletin

Published by Spunk Press <spunk@lysator.liu.se>
This issue's robin: mikael <cardell@lysator.liu.se>


The excuse for the existence of Spunk Press is the desire of some individuals to see alternative literature continue to flourish, but this time online!

The policy of Spunk Press is to act as an independent publisher of works converted to, or produced in, electronic format and to spread them as far as possible on the Internet and in the BBS society free of charge. The work may not necessarily originate from someone with net access. The major interest of Spunk Press is alternative literature and anarchist material, both old, converted, and newly produced.

For more information, send an e-mail message to <spunk-info-request@lysator. liu.se> and you will be added to the Spunk Press information distribution. This simply means that you will receive the catalogue by e-mail every time a new issue is published and that you will receive this newsletter.

This newsletter, The Spunknik is supposed to be done every few weeks. In reality, it is done on a voluntary basis whenever time is available by a series of round-robin editors. Editor of this issue is mikael. Next round-robin editor in the queue is Neil <100305.3473@compuserve.com> .

If you want to reach the actual archive, which is what Spunk Press is all about anyway, you can get at it through ordinary FTP by using

ftp://etext.archive.umich .edu/pub/Politics/Spunk

Or through the World Wide Web (WWW), using

http://www. cwi.nl/cwi/people/Jack.Jansen/spunk/Spunk_Home.html


IN THIS ISSUE

Items listed below can be searched with your favorite text viewer or editor if you are viewing the online text version of The Spunknik. Simply search for "@ foo" and you will find the entry corresponding to "foo".

If you are fortunate enough to read the WWW version, just click on the subject and you will see the article. However, all the articles are included in the same file for ease of printing. This is a feature, not a bug.

@ Ediborial or Problems, problems, problems

When I wrote the first, and so far only, Spunknik in 1994, my thought was that the newsletter would be produced by the Spunk Collective every other week. I left the question of editorhood open so we could take turns editing it. Apparently, it didn't work.

With this version, my hope is that The Spunknik will live on for at least another issue after this one. It is up to each editor to find a successor, and I trust that Neil will find someone to take the next turn.

Anyway, what all this means is that I'm truly sorry that more information hasn't been forward from the inner workings of the Spunk Press Collective, which, by the way, is open for anyone. If you want to listen in on the interaction on the collective list, that's fine too, but be prepared that there can be a lot of traffic on the list.

I promised to do this Spunknik several weeks ago, but I have been very busy programming, maintaining computer systems where I work, nursing a sick family, et cetera, et cetera. I hope you will all bear with me.

--- mikael <cardell@lysator.liu.se>, Friday, June 16, 1995.

@ Suggestion of a new Organization

There has been a rather heavy discussion on the topic of organization within Spunk Press. Jack put together some work guidelines and others have suggested a Librarian's Handbook. This is some suggestions cut directly from posts on the Spunk Press Collective mailing list:
Anyway, looks like we need to get a Managing Librarian to parcel out incoming files. Has anyone decided to take the plunge and do this?

Then, at least one member of each group of subsection workers needs to be able to get those files and pass them out to colleagues. I assume this will involve setting up accounts at etext with passwords?

Finally, subsection workers will evaluate & spiffy up files, using Librarian's Manual? Is this a good guess? Is someone in the know (Jack) drafting a manual?

As you can clearly see this topic is still under debate. If you have any suggestions, please get in touch. See below for a list of things you can do for Spunk Press.

@ What you can do for Spunk Press

@ The copyright issue

After the recent problems with Spunk in the press, things are a little chaotic. Things like procedures for inclusion in the archive hasn't been solved after I's problems. Anyway, to help sort a few things out, a copyright discussions is at hand on the list. Karl Young has been assigned the responsibility to see that author's rights are observed within Spunk Press. Karl writes:
Whoever aquires work for the archive should check its copyright status. If it is under conventional copyright, permission to use the work should be obtained from the copyright holder.

Obtaining permission from writers on anti copyright work is just as important.

Work in the public domain gets a little trickier at times. If the writer is living, s/he should be notified and asked how s/he feels about the use of h/er work. If the writer would like to revise something s/he should be given the opportunity to do so. It would be a good idea to see what we can do to set up a referal network so that if one member wants to use something but doesn't know the writer's address or phone number, s/he can contact other members who might be able to locate the writer. This might be a bit difficult to set up, but could operate pretty well once it got going. Back in December Chuck proposed keeping a list of who put what in the archive. If we kept such a list, it might help in locating writers.

In the case of work by dead writers, well, I don't put much trust in Ouija boards or mediums, but we should try our best to honor the writers' original intentions in so far as we can by using the best copy available, proofing as carefully as possible, etc. In the cases of some, conventional copyright may still apply. Some Kropotkin and Goldman, for instance, is still under copyright -- some isn't. In the case of a lot of writers from the past, it might be a good idea to check out the people at Freedom Press -- they probably have good bibliographies and publication histories available to them as well as experience in dealing with the estates of some of the classic writers.

This is all pretty simple. What it boils down to for the most part is respect for writers as fellow workers, not as livestock to be exploited. Many people on the list have strong objections to copyright and to anti copyright. That's fine for them. But the writers' autonomy in chosing to copyright their work is their own decision and should be honored. If you don't want people making decisions for you, don't go making other peoples decisions for them. If writers feel they are treated well by Spunk, they'll be more willing to contribute more of their work and to talk up the organization. If they're treated badly, we can't expect much from them - but we can expect a decline in the quality of work we get in the future.

Getting permissions can be a nuisance -- but it's usually not as much of a nuisance as it seems, and through permissions you can make connections with writers who can be of assistance to you and to Spunk in the future.

I wrote "for the most part" two paragraphs back: for the other part, not observing copyright leaves Spunk open to attack from a number of angles. If somebody wanted to shut Spunk down, they could use violation of copyright much more easily than they could political or social issues. Look at all the trouble Ian had with a simple newspaper article.

With the above, I've been thinking primarily of work that's been previously published. But the same things apply to new work. If we respect writers and give them a fair deal, even if it sometimes requires going to a little extra trouble, it will be better for everybody.

Again, I'll be glad to talk to anyone about authors' rights. My experience is in publications in print. I don't know much about rights when it comes to software, but this is an area where we should be able to pool our what we know and come up with solutions or a ways to find solutions.

The topic is still under discussion. The GNU Public License (GPL), which, however, was originally geared towards software and not texts, has been considered, but nothing has been decided. Of course, Spunk can't decide what copyright policies the authors will follow, but we can and, I think, must exhort people to strive for copyright policies that make texts possible to distribute freely.

Using GPL, if the author or originator of the text agree, brings with it that it is possible to re-sell the text, with copyright intact, to another party, however, and this might not appeal to all writers. It does mean, though, that when Spunk Press, or any other organization, can finance a print of texts, they can be sold to cover the costs of printing and other such things. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to turn Spunk Press into a real-world capitalist publishing house, but a free specialised, anarchist, publishing house, also serving all those without Internet connections.

@ Dividing the Archive

For some time now Spunk Press has been contemplating the dividing of the vast archive (now with over 1000 titles) into subsections with named persons responsible for each section. So far, these section has been decided upon (possible section managers in parenthesis):

If anyone wants to volunteer for work in any of the subsections, or if you have any suggestions on how to handle the archive, please get in touch with the collective.

Basically, what the people responsible for the subsections will do is what the collective currently does for the whole archive; that is, watch out for new material to include, scan texts, proof-read, type in, markup in HTML and similar formats and keep all the administrative things going.


That's it! I have no idea when the next Spunknik will hit the virtual newsstands, but hopefully it will just take a few weeks or a month or so.

This text has, probably, been brought to you on 100% recyclable electrons.