News: Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns

[Philip Coates]

Also: The site you linked to is inapplicable to OL stuff. It consists -- not of informal posts which may require editing or which a writer may want to review before publishing widely -- but of formal ready-for-publishing articles whose owners explicitly have agreed to have their stuff broadcast to all sorts of places -->

TERMS OF SERVICE FOR AUTHORS: "Your submission to EzineArticles.com gives unconditional permission for us to publish your article on the website and if featured, it may be distributed to our EzineArticles Ezine, RSS feed, and to our real-time email alerts members".

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

You've got to be kidding me.

After you stomp all over yourself, you make a partial copy/paste from a Wikipedia article? An old one that has already been altered? And not even attribute it at that? Wikipedia content is public domain, granted, but if you use quote marks, this does induce the reader to wonder who is being quoted.

If you want to quote something, at least quote the law from a government site:

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use⁴⁰

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors

If you want to understand the application of (4), which you have fixated on, I suggest you get familiar with the jurisprudence. I seriously doubt a person quoting you from a forum post will qualify. Not even for parody. Say, someone at ARI (or wherever) decides to publish a parody of independent Objectivists and singles out a post by you and lampoons the crap out of it. That's fair use and no amount of saying you cannot publish a book because of the parody will fall under (4).

If you ever need to sue someone or get sued, I suggest you never try to act as your own counsel or try to defend yourself.

For the record, the fair use law is purposefully vague. This stems from the common law heritage of USA law in order to give judges the leeway to use common sense.

Michael

EDIT: The ezinearticles reference was for you to ponder an economic model on the Internet, not compare with OL. I forgot you are not interested in making money.

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Resale or Profit From Other People's Posts or Writings

So, Michael, you write very long posts which seem to be dodging a clear, simple answer. Instead, you seem to be trying either (1) to be coy and change the subject -or- (2) use the argument from authority: "I know all about copyright law and you do not".

( In fact, you seemed to be suggesting you had a right to profit from others' writings, saying, in effect, 'Phil doesn't believe in profit'. Else, I don't know what you would mean by that? )

Once again, here is the relevant law and, underlined, THE MORAL REASON behind it:

"The United States Supreme Court has declared...those who wish to use another's copyrighted materials without permission must decide whether or not their utilization of the copyrighted material is going to harm either the present or potential market for the copyrighted work...especially if the new work becomes a substitute for, or makes the purchase unnecessary of, the appropriated copyrighted work itself."

In other words, you **do not have the right to resell or market or profit from someone else's writing**.

And that includes posts: They created it; they have the right to collect it into a book or make it into a magazine - or control its use. They may not even want to circulate it in printed form.

Once again, do you recognize and accept this moral principle of property rights here?

Edited October 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In other words, you **do not have the right to resell or market or profit from someone else's writing**.

And that includes posts: They created it; they have the right to collect it into a book or make it into a magazine - or control its use. They may not even want to circulate it in printed form.

Once again, do you recognize and accept this moral principle of property rights here?

Phil,

This is very tiresome because you are pushing some kind of agenda I cannot discern and the effort, frankly, bores me due to the level of incompetence you keep demonstrating with melodrama.

Let me put it this way. Should some day I wish to develop a publishing company, I would feel perfectly moral and legal should I make any fair use utilization of any post on this forum, RoR, SLOP, Noodlefood, Objectivism Online, Atlasphere, or anywhere on the Internet in the same manner that any normal publishing company (say Random House) or newspaper (say New York Times) does. That would include any work of mine that would be sold for profit, just like books sold in bookstores are sold for profit and ditto for newspapers.

I do not renounce that right.

Does that help?

I will go you one further. I promise you, with my most solemn word, that your writing will never be a part of any commercial venture of mine outside of this forum. I had no intention to begin with, but after all this crap, I want nothing to do with you businesswise under any circumstances.

Now that you have totally derailed this thread with pure BS, can we please get back to Jennifer's book? I have no doubt there are plenty of fair use quotes in it and she needs to sell it, hopefully for a very good profit.

Michael

[jriggenbach]

This is very tiresome . . .

Boy, you got that right.

JR

[Chris Grieb]

I wanted to read posts about Goddess of the Market instead I have to go through Phil being extremely tiresome.

Can't we have truth in posting. Can't we have staying on topic. Can't Phil communicate with MSK some other way if he has a problem.

Phil; Stop hi-jacking treads for your purposes. PLEASE!

[Philip Coates]

> your writing will never be a part of any commercial venture of mine outside of this forum

Very good. Then just remove those last four slippery words, if you don't want any business dealings with me. The feeling is mutual. You *do not have my permission* for my writing to be used commercially -inside- (whatever that might mean?) -or outside- of this forum.

> can we please get back to Jennifer's book

Yes. Returning to the book ((Sorry for my part in the lengthy hijack: I didn't know where the original thread was - and thought it would have been over with just a simple response to my very short original question)):

Could anyone who has read the book (when they get around to doing so) please take the time to do an actual full-fledged review of several paragraphs, either here or on Amazon? Not just a one sentence statement. Saying she discussed AR's "intellectual development" would be very interesting. But that is so vague as to be uninformative. It doesn't tell us much without saying what aspects or without any detail. For example:

Did she discuss Rand's intellectual growth in a paragraph or did she devote five chapters exclusively to it?

Did she talk about the change in her mind and interests and principles and thinking from age 6 to 40, from 40 to 70?

Did she discuss what factors helped her to become a genius?

Edited October 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Brant Gaede]

Phil, Michael has the exact same moral/legal right to your material as any other Internet guy operating a web site you might post on.

Please start another thread but get this topic off this one.

--Brant

[Philip Coates]

Brant, was your first sentence above about the book?

Was it a response to the questions I just raised about the book?

Edited October 1, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

> your writing will never be a part of any commercial venture of mine outside of this forum

Very good. Then just remove those last four slippery words, if you don't want any business dealings with me.

Phil,

I will remove no such thing, the words are not slippery, and this will be my last comment on it. Once again, just like with fair use, you have no idea regarding what your are talking about. I keep those four words because I hold intellectual precision as a value. By using them, I cover the fact that the content on this forum (including yours) triggers Adsense ads through keywords. I receive payment for those ads when people click on them. This payment does not cover the costs or running the forum, but it helps. This is a standard Internet business model used everywhere, even on SLOP, and many Objectivists don't even know it exists as they try to tell the world what it can do or not based on their lack of knowledge. I am even thinking about putting some other kind of keyword-triggered ad system up and a few normal banners.

Once I start making good bank with this and other places I am setting up to use content (but nothing from you, so you don't have to worry), I might think about using a revenue sharing script as part of the site and teaching people who contribute content how to set up accounts at the different places that pay for this automatic income so they can receive the money automatically, something similar to what Squidoo does with Google and Amazon. (Ezinearticles does not do this, but some other big article directories do. There are some really good places on the web.) But that's in the future and I want to make sure this is worthwhile for folks, especially by having enough traffic potential to generate good income. That's just one facet of what I shall be doing.

Don't worry, though. You will not be involved.

And for the rest of this thread, I have a request. If once again you get an uncontrollable itch to be bossy and impose the half-baked rules in your head on other folks, try at least to understand what you are talking about. Fake-it-till-you-make-it is a terrible use of Objectivist epistemology, but the kinds of posts you have made here shows that it is rampant...

Back to Jennifer Burns.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, was your first sentence above about the book?

Was it a response to the questions I just raised about the book?

No, Phil. I was swept up in all the inertia you generated on this thread on the other subject. I got buried in the avalanche. You'll be entitled to complain in a few more days, however. Stand by while I dig myself out.

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

When I get home and can consult Goddess of the Market, I'll post something in response to Phil's book-related question.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Could anyone who has read the book (when they get around to doing so) please take the time to do an actual full-fledged review of several paragraphs, either here or on Amazon? Not just a one sentence statement. Saying she discussed AR's "intellectual development" would be very interesting. But that is so vague as to be uninformative. It doesn't tell us much without saying what aspects or without any detail. For example:

Did she discuss Rand's intellectual growth in a paragraph or did she devote five chapters exclusively to it?

Did she talk about the change in her mind and interests and principles and thinking from age 6 to 40, from 40 to 70?

Did she discuss what factors helped her to become a genius?

Phil,

I'm not trying to write a full-dress review of Goddess of the Market here.

The quick answer is that much of the book is about aspects of Ayn Rand's intellectual growth. Because the book is focused on Ms. Rand's place within American right-wing politics, Jennifer Burns concentrates on Ayn Rand's political thinking.

For instance, Dr. Burns contrasts The Fountainhead as Rand originally understood with The Fountainhead as she completed it, after her participation in the Wendell Willkie for President campaign, and her attempt to write an individualist manifesto (never published).

For another instance, there's a lot about her relationship with isabel Paterson, and what she learned from Pat.

Dr. Burns is not so interested in Rand the philosopher; epistemology gets only a few mentions.

Jennifer Burns considers Rand to have been an exceptional person, but she doesn't use the word "genius."

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

> The quick answer is that much of the book is about aspects of Ayn Rand's intellectual growth.

That's good news.

> ..Jennifer Burns concentrates on Ayn Rand's political thinking.

That isn't as much - I suspect those of us who are au courant probably know a great deal of this.

> . . . and her attempt to write an individualist manifesto (never published).

She wrote one, Textbook of Americanism. 1946. It was published. You can find it on the web.

> For another instance, there's a lot about her relationship with Isabel Paterson, and what she learned from Pat.

That would be interesting...as would be, on different subjects, Hospers.

Here's my real question, Robert: If you were exclusively interested in how such a powerful and incisive thinker bootstrapped herself, how her mind grew in range or effectiveness or scope --- whether as a philosopher or literarilly or in terms of cultural insight --- which of the five or six memoirs or biographies over the decades (if you've read them) has the most material / spends the most time on that subject...whether you agree or disagree with the author?

Edited October 2, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There's an article about Jennifer's book, along with Anne Heller's book, in the new Time Magazine.

Business Books by Andrea Sachs

I hesitate to call this a review, but it is great publicity.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Phil,

I wasn't referring to Textbook of Americanism, which I've read (albeit many years ago) and which Jennifer Burns also mentioned.

Ayn Rand attempted one manifesto of individualism in 1941, and ended up putting it aside.

She attempted a second one during the couple of years after The Fountainhead was published. Eventually put that one aside as well, but chunks of it appeared, in Harrimanized form, in her published Journals.

Some of what Dr. Burns says about Ayn Rand's relationships with other conservative or libertarian thinkers would be familiar to you if you'd read The Woman and the Dynamo by Stephen Cox and Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty. Other things are not covered in either of those books.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Thanks for the pointer to the Time piece.

It's more of a lick and a promise than a review; it looks like the writer just quit when he hit his word limit.

It will be good publicity, though.

And all of quotes are from Jennifer Burns' book.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

The Time piece states the central attack line against Rand's individualism in an admirably terse way: "her me-first brand of capitalism has been excoriated for fomenting the recent financial crisis". (This line has been successful intellectually since Marx or even before applied to every concrete situation in economic history and is used against every defender of capitalism.) In other words, pursuing your own interests is -impractical-. BTW, Jenifer was on a PBS? radio show and makes some mistakes in grasping some of the political ideas (I wish I had taken notes or had the link)which will help perpetuate this error.

I remember the point where I became an Objectivist, sitting in the college library reading CUI (not VOS), looking out over the skyline of Providence: "Ah, so this is -true- then." The breakthrough will come when the attack line is discredited. Until then billions will not take Objectivism seriously enough to investigate it. True, you have to make the case that it is moral, but you have to (often) first awaken people to the idea that it is practical, not likely to lead to all the Marxist fallacies. Since the practical is the moral, they and their interrelationship have to be argued simultaneously in many cases.

Edited October 2, 2009 by Philip Coates

[Robert Campbell]

Here's another review (unfortunately too brief) of the Burns and Heller books, by Nick Gillespie.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=554064

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

Subject: Nick Gillespie's Relentlessly Hostile Piece

Robert, thanks for keeping us informed of these reviews.

The Wilson Quarterly is certain hitting the big time, writing for the big leagues. Like The New Yorker, it tends to feature some of the finest intellectual writing, even when one disagrees with particular pieces. Many of the best articles I've read over the years have been in these top tier intellectual periodicals.

But hold your excitement: The price Gillespie pays is that he has bought into (or panders to?) all the negative critiques of Rand, not just her personal life but more deeply intellectually as a writer, thinker, philosopher. About the only positive thing he can bring himself to say is that she is important to today's dialogue.

But it's hard to find a single thing in the piece which would make people have much if any respect for her or her novels or for Objectivism.

Robert, did you not notice this? (You only commented on the review being too short.)

I don't know Mr. Gillespie, but he is a former editor of Reason magazine - and this is all he got out of Rand's ideas???

Edited October 3, 2009 by Philip Coates

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Subject: Nick Gillespie's Relentlessly Hostile Piece

Robert, thanks for keeping us informed of these reviews.

The Wilson Quarterly is certain hitting the big time, writing for the big leagues. Like The New Yorker, it tends to feature some of the finest intellectual writing, even when one disagrees with particular pieces. Many of the best articles I've read over the years have been in these top tier intellectual periodicals.

But hold your excitement: The price Gillespie pays is that he has bought into (or panders to?) all the negative critiques of Rand, not just her personal life but more deeply intellectually as a writer, thinker, philosopher. About the only positive thing he can bring himself to say is that she is important to today's dialogue.

But it's hard to find a single thing in the piece which would make people have much if any respect for her or her novels or for Objectivism.

Robert, did you not notice this? (You only commented on the review being too short.)

I don't know Mr. Gillespie, but he is a former editor of Reason magazine - and this is all he got out of Rand's ideas???

The slick superficiality and gossipy nature of this review is simply nauseating. Ever since Virginia Postrel left Reason, it has become a third-rate image is everything magazine. There is little or nothing about Rand's passion for individual rights, her opposition to initiation of force, and her revolutionary theory of concepts. Paraphrasing Rand's characterization of Francisco, Gillespie is just a squirming comma next to Rand.

Jim

Edited October 3, 2009 by James Heaps-Nelson

[Robert Campbell]

I'm not a fan of Nick Gillespie. I'd been a Reason subscriber with a couple brief interruptions since the early 1970s, and thought Virginia Postrel was one of the best things that ever happened to the magazine; I dropped the subscription after he took over from her, and have never picked it back up.

I still think a long review from him would have been a lot more interesting than a short one.

By the way, the "needle" business was a sloppy reference to Rand's habit during her Chatsworth days (as revealed on p. 134 of Jennifer Burns' book) of poking herself in the thumb with a pin when she found that her concentration was flagging.

Robert Campbell

[jriggenbach]

I'm not a fan of Nick Gillespie. I'd been a Reason subscriber with a couple brief interruptions since the early 1970s, and thought Virginia Postrel was one of the best things that ever happened to the magazine; I dropped the subscription after he took over from her, and have never picked it back up.

Just for the record, Nick Gillespie is no longer editor of Reason.

JR

[Brant Gaede]

I'm not a fan of Nick Gillespie. I'd been a Reason subscriber with a couple brief interruptions since the early 1970s, and thought Virginia Postrel was one of the best things that ever happened to the magazine; I dropped the subscription after he took over from her, and have never picked it back up.

Just for the record, Nick Gillespie is no longer editor of Reason.

JR

After nearly 38 years of continuous subscription I dropped Reason a few months ago. It's just a minor league team for Forbes magazine. I dropped Forbes too. The first 15 years were the most interesting. There never was one article on "reason." It represents a very attenuated libertarianism. I don't miss it. The important stuff is all over the Internet anyway. I'm not saying they don't come with some good articles from time to time. Editorially it was nothing. That may have changed. I simply stopped reading the front of the magazine years ago.

--Brant

Edited October 3, 2009 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Campbell]

Jeff R,

Right—Matt Welch is now the editor of the magazine.

Nick Gillespie is still listed as editor at Reason.com and Reason TV.

From what I've seen of the magazine since Matt Welch took it over, it hasn't changed.

Robert C