Last week I launched a new website called Prometheus Unbound. I aim for it to be a sort of online “magazine,” a libertarian review of fiction and literature. The site will feature reviews, news commentary, articles and editorials, and eventually (I hope) interviews, from a libertarian perspective. I’m entertaining the possibility of publishing original fiction in the undetermined future, but won’t be doing so anytime soon.
I’ve already got a number of posts up, some old and republished from other sites, some new. I’m hoping this won’t be a one-man show, so I’m looking for some regular writers as well as submissions from irregular or part-time contributors. There are already a few others on board, so you should start to see posts from them before long. If you’re interested in contributing a review, news commentary, or the like, contact me.
You can learn more about Prometheus Unbound, my reasons for creating it, and what I’m looking for in submissions by starting with my introductory post. I’m particularly interested in science fiction and fantasy prose fiction, but Prometheus Unbound will be open to submissions dealing with just about any genre or medium, including film, tv, comics and graphic novels, and poetry.
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Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.
A while back I published a blogpost here about the individualist American strain of SF and the more cosmological perspective of the British strain. I just published and expanded and revised version at The Libertarian Standard, working in more explicit libertarian observations.
Cory Doctorow recently announced an experiment to prove that giving away free ebooks works. Michael Stackpole responded with a deconstruction of Cory’s experiment. He makes a number of good points about the experiment, though I think he comes off unnecessarily harsh on Cory personally. And one gets the impression that he feels threatened by the growing anti-IP movement. He has his own (antiquated) business model and bottom-line to protect after all, though I applaud him for being a pioneer in experimenting with ebooks and podcasting. One remark of his in particular, in his second blogpost on Cory’s experiment (“What is Cory Doing Right?“), cuts right to the heart of the matter. I left a comment on his blogpost in response but for whatever reason it hasn’t appeared yet and might never appear [Update: must have been stuck in moderator limbo, it finally appeared] , so I’m reproducing it below:
“For some reason folks think it’s okay to say to a creator of intellectual property that the product of our labors should be free; yet they never convincingly press that argument at a farmer’s market.”
This is because intellectual property is not legitimate property, whereas a farmer’s produce is. You might check out the following:
- Stephan Kinsella, “The Case Against IP: A Concise Guide,” Mises Daily (Sept. 4, 2009).
- Stephan Kinsella, Against Intellectual Property, Mises Institute (2008).
- Roderick T. Long, “The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights,” Formulations Vol. 3, No. 1 (Autumn 1995).
- Michelle Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly, Cambridge University Press (2008).
Political Science PhD
