{"id":1119,"date":"2006-02-12T15:41:13","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T19:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2006-02-12T15:41:13","modified_gmt":"2006-02-12T19:41:13","slug":"jefferson-on-free-ideas-and-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=1119","title":{"rendered":"Jefferson on free ideas and light"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This quote, from a letter by Jeffereson to Isaac McPherson, appears widely in discussions about copyright and technology. Interesting how it connects ideas, instruction and light (not to mention &#8220;tapers&#8221; or tapors.) See for example, <a title=\"LIBREria.org's Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig\" href=\"http:\/\/libreria.sourceforge.net\/library\/Free_Culture\/Property.html\">LIBREria.org&#8217;s Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig<\/a>. I also came across it in Mark Katz&#8217;s Capturing Sound where he discusses MP3s and Napster-like technologies. (See page 163). Katz in turn finds it in an article by Barlow. In short, the image of lighting one taper from another provides a metaphor for &#8220;nonrivalrous resources&#8221; &#8211; resources where possession and consumption by one person doesn&#8217;t diminish access by another.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nLessig provides the full reference as, &#8220;Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6 (Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., 1903), 330, 333-34.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. This quote, from a letter by Jeffereson to Isaac McPherson, appears widely in discussions about copyright and technology. Interesting how it connects ideas, instruction and light (not to mention &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=1119\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Jefferson on free ideas and light<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text-technology-and-tapor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}