Theos-Talk Archives (September 2004 Message tt00277)

At 05:27 PM 9/7/2004, you wrote:

> The sad truth about religious studies scholarship is that access to
> resources can depend on implicit promises not to question truth claims
> associated with belief systems ...
Paul:

This seems unfair in the sense that restrictions are put on the information 
that may be shared with you. When someone says, "We'll let you know this 
secret if you promise not to tell anyone," it makes it seem better to find 
out from someone else that doesn't extract such an unfair promise.

Other restrictions I don't like are when someone collects certain materials 
and then imposes a usage restriction on them. Say someone came to me and 
wanted to copy an article out of the 1889 volume of LUCIFER. If I were to 
say that the person needed my permission to use and publish that article, 
that would be extortion, yet I've heard of archives imposing such 
restrictions on materials that are, I suspect, in terms of copyright, in 
the public domain.

As a courtesy, I'd acknowledge in a citation that a particular picture or 
article came from such-and-such an archive, but I do not think that it's 
fair for an archive to impose conditions on the use of the materials once 
they have been shared.

> From the standpoint of the free flow of information and the right of 
people to think for themselves, I also can appreciate the feelings that 
people may have when sharing archives. If I was working to promote a 
specific belief system and heavily involved in an organization that 
promoted it, I would hesitate to provide free access to materials that 
would provide ammunition to critics. But that would only be the case if I 
were closed-minded, and were unwilling to allow myself sufficient 
objectivity to accept that my viewpoint is just that -- a viewpoint -- and 
should exist side-by-side with the equally legitimate but sometimes 
different viewpoints of others.

-- Eldon