UK Indymedia | PUBLIC BOOK BURNING

New moon Winter Solstice 404 / 30th Kislev 5764 : 30th Shawwal 1424:
XMass Day 25th December, 2003
4-7pm

PUBLIC BOOK BURNING
at the Anti-Systemic Library

New moon Winter Solstice 404 / 30th Kislev 5764 : 30th Shawwal 1424:
XMass Day 25th December, 2003
4-7pm

Bring book/s to read, discuss, donate and/or burn at the Anti Systemik Library before a short march into the City of London for a public book burning accompanied by eat, drink and merry making:
ALL WELCOME!

The Anti-Systemic Library at LONDON ACTION RESOURCE CENTRE
is open every Wednesday 1 – 9pm
Thursday 4 – 7pm
Sunday 2-5pm

62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES nearest tube: Whitechapel
Phone: 020 7377 9088

http://londonarc.org

A special bus service will run on the day: leave name, location and contact number to book.

http://www.c6.org/evol/anticolony/board/read.php?f=1&i=101&t=101

How do you ( or anybody using your resources ) find what you're looking for? Seems like a bit of bourgoise nonsense. Book burning? Why not recycle them if you don't like them:)

Is there a point to this or are you just going to burn books for the hell of it? Is it some sort of revelling in the bliss of ignorance? Pride at refusing to learn? What?

there is both sense and point:

check

http://www.c6.org/evol/anticolony/board/read.php?f=1&i=101&t=101
for replies already given.

i heard many things, including someone saying that publisising the event as a book burning is a strategy to exclude christians and someone else saying it's to weed out liberals, but who knows?

i have my own ideas, but i won't publish them here: you'll just have to cum down to the event and find out!

There may well be a point and sense to it all but that link you keep posting contains neither.

What IS the point?

mmm didnt the nazi's burn books
that is just wanton destruction and
following in footsteps of some very notorious people
it adds to the green house effect too
at least you could pulp for recycled paper
them if ya dont want them
you should be ashamed
how dare you sign yourself luther blissit
after saying your going to burn books
i hope they burn your fingers and more

So called activists spend most of their waking hours actually being very inactive and obsessively reading the same endlessly recycled ideas and to what purpose? So they can spend the rest of their waking hours having tedious meetings and discussing all the repetitive bollocks they've read and trying to impress each other with their ability to make so much hot air out of so little. Just think, nearly every book in the Larc library can be summarised in 3 words: Capitalism is bad.

The fact that so many authors can say the same thing in so many different ways and with so many words is a source of constant amazement to me. Present day activism is drowning in an ocean of useless theory and philosophy. The theorists, philosophers and other miscellaneous wafflers have completely hijacked the entire movement which I think is terribly sad. Few people seem interested anymore in actually doing much that's tangible, effective and useful. Burning all those books in the library would probably heat several people's homes for a year and zcat, books aren't a fossil fuel unlike gas and oil. That would be useful. Sadly this whole book burning proposal is obvioulsy some pointless symbolic gesture intended to stimulate "further discussion". Spare us further bollocks please.

whomsoever speak shall burneth books
now off to mordor to throw books in rivers to see if they float
like moses and activists and artists who read too much
in which case they will lead the fifth monarchists back to uncharterised psychogeografic spots

'u' (not the police or the masons or yr mono-optik masonik mum n dad) are welcum 2 affiliate 'us' wiv sadaam hussein or spare 'us' bollox

So thou’d cut the zealot’s finger, from the truth
he turns and flees!
Lo, this hapless Lover weeps not though they flay him head to foot

But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute; so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical

Damn.

I knew I should have sold those books to Porcupine instead of donating them to the LARD library.

What food are you providing? Is it leftover turky?

The book is no doubt a commodity, but it is not a short-term, ordinary commodity, one that can be consumed and then discarded. Rather, making works available should be regarded as a long-term intellectual and cultural service, available at all times. And this is especially true for the work of major authors. It seems ludicrous that a reader looking for a novel by Youssef El- Siba'ie or a short story collection by Ihsan Abdel- Quddous should emerge from the bookshops empty- handed.

So let us briefly visit this history: The Anglo-American copyright regime arose out of practices and policies of the English Stationers’ Guild in the late 15th and early 16thcenturies.16To ensure harmony within the ranks, the guild established a registry system for staking claims in books. Members entered into the guild register the names of books in which they claimed printing rights,17whereupon other guild members were expected to refrain from publishing the same book. A private enforcement system enabled guild members to resolve disputes amongst themselves over rights in particular books. While some stationers in this era were surely noble fellows who sought to enlighten the public, the private copyright system of the pre-modern era mainly functioned to regulate the book trade to ensure that members of the guild enjoyed monopolies in the books they printed.
13See, e.g., Yochai Benkler, Free As the Air to Common Use: First Amendment Constraints on the Enclosure of the Public Domain, 74 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 354 (1999);

This system was, however, conducive to taking on a second function. Conveniently for English authorities, the guild’s practices provided an infrastructure for controlling (i.e., suppressing) publication of heretical and seditious materials. The English kings and queens were quite willing to grant to the Stationers’ Guild control over the publication of books in the realm in exchange for the guild’s promise to refrain from printing such dangerous materials.

18Until its abolition, the Star Chamber was available to enforce judgments emanating from the stationers’ private adjudication system. The pre-modern copyright system undoubtedly promoted freedom of expression by making books more widely available. However, this was an incidental byproduct of the market for books, not an intended purpose of the then-prevailing copyright system. Far more harmonious was the relationship between copyright and censorship in that era. Men burned at the stake for writing texts that were critical of the Crown or of established religion, and printers of such books could expect no better fate. The stationers’ copyright regime was part of the apparatus aimed at ensuring that these texts would not be printed or otherwise be made widely accessible to the public. The principal development that ushered in the modern era of copyright was the English Parliament’s passage of the Statute of Anne in 1710.

19On its face, this statute was both a repudiation of several principal tenets of the stationers’ copyright system and a redirection of copyright’s purpose away from censorship and toward freedom of expression principles. In addition, it sought to promote competition among printers and booksellers—that is, to break the stranglehold that major firms within the Stationers’ Company had had over the book trade. The Statute of Anne achieved these goals in several ways:

First, the act granted rights to authors, not to publishers.
Second, it did so for the utilitarian purpose of inducing learned men to write and publish books.
Third, the act established a larger societal purpose for copyright, namely, to promote learning.
Fourth, it granted rights only in newly authored books. Thereafter, ancient books were in the public domain and could be printed by anyone.
Fifth, it limited the duration of copyright protection to fourteen years (renewable for another fourteen years if the author was living at the end of that term), thus abolishing perpetual copyrights.20
Sixth, the statute conferred rights of a limited character (not to control all uses, but to control the printing and reprinting of protected works).
Seventh, it imposed a responsibility on publishers to deposit copies of their works with designated libraries.
Eighth, it provided a system for redressing grievances about overpriced books. 18That the Licensing Acts were integrally interrelated with the Stationers’ copyright system is demonstrated in part by the fact that the Stationers Company emphasized the valuable role of these acts in suppressing dangerous speech when arguing that Parliament should reinstate the Licensing Acts after they expired in the late 17thcentury.

19See, e.g., Rose, supra note 15 (discussing the Statute of Anne). 20A “grandfather” provision allowed holders of existing copyrights some additional time to exploit the rights, but the duration was limited. Id.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 5
While it took an additional fifty years or so for pre-modern copyright system to die away,21the modern law of copyright emerged from the Statute of Anne’s precepts. Censorship held no place of honor in this new copyright system. The modern copyright system embraced Enlightenment values that influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

22Article I, sec. 8, cl. 8 of the Constitution, which empowers Congress to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing to authors and inventors for limited times an exclusive right in their respective writings and discoveries, should be viewed in historical context as an American endorsement of England’s repudiation of the speech-suppressing, anti-competitive and otherwise repressive pre-modern copyright system that the English Parliament meant to reshape through the Statute of Anne. Core elements of the Statute of Anne are reflected in that clause’s purpose (“to promote Science”), in the persons to whom rights were to be granted (“authors”), and in the duration of rights (“for limited times”). Marci Hamilton has sometimes asserted that the Constitution did not include a provision on freedom of speech because the framers had done everything necessary to ensure a healthy system of free expression by authorizing enactment of a copyright law.

Well that's an argument for burning the publishers.

I still don't see any sign of a point to this book burning.

In response to zcat:

Clearly the Nazi's implemented layered admin access privileges. However, to conclude that those who advocate such measures for an Independent Media Centre are Nazi's would be false.

A more aposite parallel would be the Blasphemy Act passed in London on August 9th 1650. This lead to the burning of Abiezer Coppe's "The Fiery Flying Roll", and indeed the imprisonment of Coppe himself.

Gerrard Winstanley contributed towards the climate of oppression by publishing his "Vindication of those whose endeavours is only to make the Earth a common treasury called Diggers, or Some Reasons given by them against the immoderate use of creatures, or the excessive community of women called ranting; or rarther renting" in 1649.

Here he describes the ranting power as "the resurrection of the unclean doggish beastly nature, it is the resurrection of the filth, unrighteous power in all his branches, and it is high now but will rise higher, for it must rise to the hight to shew himselfe a compleat man of darknesse, that he may come judgement and so becast out of heaven, That is out of makinde."

Whilst he may call for no use of violence against such terrible people, for some this might sound like the old fascist trick of making sure that militants always carried an expulsion letter from the party when they went on direct actions. Others may feel they can afford to be more charitable.

He goes on even to denounce the children of the lascivious ranters - those who would not abide by Winstanleys narrow Christian view of marriage:

"Therefore know all ye Lasivious, feedars, or sarvers of your own bellies, that ye are breeders of all foule filthy beastly and abominable children, which come into this world to preach to that nation, where they appeare, what the first signe of filthy Sinne or lasivious feeding heats, begot for lasivious feeding, causeth lacivious acting which if they knew the resurrection or eternall Iudgement, they durst not act." is perhaps one of his more immoderate remarks.

This was written as the English genocide of Native Amercians was proceeding a pace. Yet Winstanley is ready to flatter readers of "A New yeers gift sent to the parliament and Armie" that Engladn could be "The First of Nations" in 1650.

Yet to reduce Winstanley to his nationalism, to depict him as the Otto Strasser of the English Revolution, would be to loose sight of the social dynamics of the revolution - "to Defame a land's name for the sake of a few- then it's not the truth that you're after"- (the Angelic Upstarts).

So let it burn, baby, burn!

A copy of Gerrard Winstanley's "Selected Writings" is available for consultation at the antisystemic library. Another copy was burnt.

Harry Potter

evol

PUBLIC BOOK BURNING

Comments

nonsense

What's the point?

http://www.c6.org/evol/anticolony/board/read.php?f=1&i=101&t=101

Point? Sense?

so nazi's in larc

Sounds great. Burn 'em all

secunder luthor bliss

For him who does not really heed, a thousand explanations are not enough.

A missed opportunity

information = knowledge = wisdom

OK

Blasphemy, Blasphemy, they've all got it blasphemy

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