Transpublishing:
COMMON OBJECTIONS

"You're trying to undermine the principle that everything is free on the Net."
Hardly.  It's wonderful that people are giving away tons of free information.  But there is a vast quantity of published material-- much of the finest-- which is not free on the Net, because it has been carefully created, and is being carefully guarded, by professional publishers.  No amount of pressure will cause all these materials to become free (and the newest copyright laws have become extremely savage toward violators.)  We are trying to make it possible for publishers to make their finest material available on the Net-- and create a new zone of copyright, where everyone is free to re-publish material virtually.  The greatest problem is not technical, it's explaining it.

"People will steal the material"
Transpublishing is no more vulnerable than any other reasonable system (the extreme and bulletproof systems, with highly-defined and highly-restricted forms of usage, are unreasonable).  No party with a fixed business address can offer stolen copyrighted materials openly, or republish them except if permitted (as we are proposing).

"Nobody wants old stuff anyhow."
This rather charming statement, sometimes heard from students, can only be made by the young.  Wonderful diagrams, explanations, videos, poems ... have already been created, but are scattered all over and not separately usable; this system is intended to make them freely re-usable without difficulty.

"There's no editing system for it yet."
This is part of the work we are now doing at Keio University.