SIVACRACY.NET

Apparently Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt does not understand his own job.

As a professor and author of the new book Bullshit, he has taken it upon himself to be a copyright cop as well. He sent a personal cease-and-desist letter to Paul Schmelzer, author of the brilliant and essential blog, Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas.

Why? Because Paul quoted exactly this much of his book:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis...

Hmmm. Perhaps Professor Frankfurt should include copyright abuse among the list of "bullshit" claims flying around our culture these days.

Here is text from his cease-and-desist letter:

Dear Mr.Smelzer:

It has come to my attention that you have placed a copy of my essay "On Bullshit" on your website. I appreciate the compliment.  As you may know, however, the essay has recently been published as a book by the Princeton University Press. The management of the Press and I are concerned that your use of my essay may interfere with sales of the book. In any case, it constitutes a clear infringement of my copyright. I must ask you, therefore, to remove the essay from your website as soon as possible.
 
Sincerely,
Harry Frankfurt

Now, I seriously doubt that Princeton University Press objects to a blogger quoting from one of their books for commentary or criticism. I would shudder to think that a major academic publishing house would be that ignorant of or hostile toward fair use. It's scary enough that a professor does not believe in fair use.

How about this? If you have a blog out there, copy and paste the exact text that got Paul in trouble. Post in on your blog. See what happens.

Better yet, someone at Princeton should scour Professor Frankfurt's body of work for his use of quotes from copyrighted material. Could he really have made a career without quoting?

UPDATE:

Princeton UP has posted the EXCERPT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER of his book on the Web. But it is accompanied by the standard overblown ... one might say BULLSHIT copyright warning:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Published by Princeton University Press and copyrighted, © , by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers. Follow links for Class Use and other Permissions. For more information, send e-mail to permissions@pupress.princeton.edu

BTW, it's not much of an excerpt, but it's more than Paul quoted. In fact, here it is:

Chapter 1

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not--or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.

In my critical judgement, this essay should not be a book. It should be an essay posted on the Web. Criticism in a free society: That's what fair use is all about. That's also what calling bullshit bullshit is all about.

See the connection?

UPDATE UPDATE

Comments from Ed Felten (no slacker when defending users' rights and criticizing copyright overreach) and others indicate the strong possibility that Frankfurt did not distinguish between a link to the original full text of the article and a posting of the full text of the article. That certainly could be the case.

If it is, I apologize to professor Frankfurt.

I wonder, did someone at PUP lead him astray?