University, brought to you by Pepsi-Cola, official drink of Large
Northeastern. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye
employable. Hi, I'm the head of the microbiology department here
at Large Northeastern. I'm also on the board of directors of
TransGenic Corporation. The Chancellor says it's okay because a cut
of the patent money goes to Large Northeastern.
Welcome to the Library of Congress. Jolt Cola is the official drink
of the Library of Congress. This is our distributed electronic data
network, brought to you by Prodigy Services, a joint venture of IBM
and Sears. You'll notice the banner of bright-red ads that runs by
your eyeballs while you're trying to access the electronic
full-text of William Wordsworth. Try to pay no attention to that.
Incidentally there's a Hypertext link here where you can order our
Wordsworth T-shirt and have it billed to your credit card. Did I
mention that the Library of Congress is now also a bank? Hey, data
is data! Digits are digits! Every pixel in cyberspace is a
potential sales opportunity.
Be sure to visit our library coffee-bar, too. You can rent videos
here if you want. We do souvenir umbrellas, ashtrays, earrings, the
works. We librarians are doing what we can to survive this
economically difficult period. After all, the library is a
regrettably old-fashioned institution which has not been honed into
fighting trim by exposure to healthy market competition. Until
now, that is!
The American library system was invented in a different cultural
climate. This is how it happened. You're Benjamin Franklin, a
printer and your average universal genius, and it's the Year of Our
Lord 1731. You have this freewheeling debating club called the
Junto, and you decide you're going to pool your books and charge
everybody a very small fee to join in and read them. There's about
fifty of you. You're not big people, in the Junto. You're
not aristocrats or well-born people or even philanthropists. You're
mostly apprentices and young people who work with their hands. If
you were rich, you wouldn't be so anxious to pool your information
in the first place. So you put all your leatherbound books into
the old Philadelphia clubhouse, and you charge people forty
shillings to join and ten shillings dues per annum....
Now forget 1731. It's 1991. Forget the leatherbound books. You
start swopping floppy disks and using a bulletin board system.
Public spirited? A benefit to society? Democratic institution,
knowledge is power, power to the people? Maybe... or maybe you're
an idealistic nut, Mr. Franklin. Not only that, but you're
menacing our commercial interests. What about our trade secrets, Mr
Franklin? Our trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Our
intellectual property rights. Our look-and-feel. Our patented
