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Freedom:
Use It or Lose It
[Fred Woodworth]
AFTER CONSIDERABLE thought, I have decided to begin a policy of not
publishing reviews of books that carry ISBNs (International Standard Book
Numbers). The reason is that these numbers, as I've been warning for
several years, amount to a virtual license to publish (or at least to
distribute what you intend to publish, which is the same thing) .
In the issue for Winter 1989-90, I wrote that: It's easy to foresee
a time when, in order to get an ISBN, you have.to pay a $5 fee. No one will
complain very much. 'The fee is necessary for processing. ' Then it's $25.
Tiny music magazines and newsletters perhaps can't pay it, but then their
distribution is strictly local and free anyway, so they don't put up a
fuss. Some time later, the fee becomes renewable every year, and goes up to
$40, with some paperwork. Perhaps in time of war there's suddenly a loyalty
oath on the paperwork, or in time of peace the publisher agrees to a review
by the Local Anti-Pornography Committee or Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
just to make sure that the valuable PRIVILEGE of using the ISBN isn't
handed out indiscriminately to people who ENDANGER SOCIETY via their
IRRESPONSIBLE writings...
Two and one-half years later, the ISBN's presence not only is an
imprimatur whose absence bars a book or magazine from over 90% of
bookstores, but moreover, as predicted, the company that assigns the
numbers is starting to demand
hefty fees for doing so. A publisher of radical books and pamphlets, See
Sharp Press, recently requested the granting of some additional numbers
from the R. R. Bowker company, for some of See Sharp's upcoming issuances.
Bowker responded that for this there would now be a fee: one hundred
dollars.
As a result, See Sharp had to drop the numbers on future pamphlets;
but it will bite the bullet and continue to request numbers for its book
issuances. Why? I asked See Sharp's proprietor, Chaz Bufe, this question
and his answer was: "Fred, if I don't put the numbers on them, I can't
distribute them. Bookstores will not take them."
"A few bookstores still will," I replied. "Don't you think it would
make sense to encourage those few, and show we're willing to boycott the
others? Maybe if everybody in the alternative, radical, and small press
would stand shoulder to shoulder on this, we could force them to back down
before the thing gets so powerful that we won't have any way to resist at
all."
"Fred, I just can't. If I take the numbers off. I won't be able
tosell any books."
"Sure you will! Maybe not as many, but if we can beat this before
it gets any worse. then you'd sell more again, AND have the pride of having
fought and won against a truly arrogant kind of imposition, instead of
meekly compromising principles. "
"Look, Fred-do you have a driver's license?''
"Yes."
"Then you've compromised, too. What's the difference? "
"The difference is that if I'm caught driving without one, I'll be
arrested and, when they find out who I am, possibly beaten up or even
killed 'resisting arrest' or 'assaulting an officer'. But nobody can arrest
us for not using the ISBN- at least not YET."
We had to agree to disagree. However, for this magazine (and, for
that matter, my own LIFE), my absolutely unshakable policy is this: No
compromise with any authority: that is, no giving in to mere threats of
ostracism or economic hardship. Yes, if a cop points a gun at me and says,
"Stand over there with your hands against the wall," I will stand over
there with my hands against the wall. But I will not bow and scrape before
people who don't even carry a gun.
It may come to pass that every single bookstore, library and
magazine-stand in the world requires an ISBN. The Post Office may demand
that periodicals transmitted through it have the numbers. But even if I
have to personally carry these publications to the doors of the readers,
one by one, The Match will forever refuse to grovel as some corporate
schemers grinningly hand out licenses to publish.
Here then, is the policy of The Match on reviews: In the case of
materials from allegedly radical publishers (anarchist, libertarian,
atheist, freethinker, socialist, etc.), we will review only items that do
not carry the ISBN. In the case of magazines or books from non-radical
publishers, we may sometimes review (the difference being that alleged
radicals ought to know better, and are therefore held to a higher standard)
.
If sufficient acceptable new issuances are not forthcoming, we will
review older books that the reader can find in used-book stores. After
all, the general practice of reviewing only new things, is fairly
arbitrary, and is probably just a detestable excrescence of consumerism in
any case. Reviewing old books then gives us a chance to really RE-view-or
see again-works that may well have been too hastily set aside to make way
for the galloping mediocrity of the latest fashion.
from The Match! (Issue number 88, Summer 1993;
Fred Woodworth, PO Box 3488, Tucson, AZ 85722; $10 / 4 issues)