Needless to say I was surprised to see McKenzie Wark's name sitting in my inbox today. Mr. Wark is the author of the book "A Hacker Manifesto", the subject of my piece Ctrl+X Ctrl+V Marxism.

With his permission, I have posted one of Mr. Wark's replies to me.

I've haven't read Mr. Wark's book yet but plan to do so and have ordered a copy for our library. Until then it remains to be seen whether I will agree with Mr. Wark's thoughts in another email that our two sides differ slighty. I hope so. But I can say this before reading the book. McKenzie Wark has my respect.

(McKenzie Wark)

While someone like Lawrence Lessig may have the power to get a publisher to agree to release his book under the creative commons licence, i do not. So my book is copyrighted by Harvard University Press. They were completely inflexible on this issue. And they have their reasons. Like a lot of publishers they see their market conditions deteriorating every year and they don't see how to turn it around.

So with my book, you can get the ideas for free on the net, but if you want right now to get the whole text that HUP spent time and money editing and proofing, that will cost you about $20. We worked together to make it a very well designed book, so you get something more that the information for your $20. You get the most user friendly version of the text in a nice hardbound book.

Now you might say: why did i not just put the whole thing on the internet? Well, from 2000 to 2003, I did. As the text grew and evolved, each iteration was on the net. And lots of people found it and responded, or invited me to come and talk to them about it. But since it came out with the Harvard imprint on the spine, a lot *more* people are talking about it, including yourself.

So that's the paradox the current IP/publishing situation leaves us with. There's value in the work someone like HUP does, and even more in the rarity of their imprimateur.But nobody really knows any more what kind of economy can support that. What happened to my book is an example of the contradictions. The text itself tries to thik them. You may not like the Marxist languafge in which i do it, but it is one of very few 'big picture 'languages for thinking about information and property.

-- thanks for acquiring a copy and for noting it on your blog. I just want to point out that the IP situation with this particular book is a bit more complicated than you make out.

regards

k

McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~A Hacker Manifesto