By Brian Carnell

Thursday, April 11, 2002

Glenn Reynolds worte an article back in March about the odd case of Scientific American's attack on Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Scientific American seemed obsessed with Lomborg, what with seeking out multiple people to attack his book and not allowing Lomborg to reply within the same issue (which is a fairly standard practice for scientific journals).

So Lomborg copied the article onto his web site where he also supplied his critique of their criticisms. Scientific American replied by sending a cease and desist letter to Lomborg threatening to sue him if he did not remove the article from his web site. Lomborg complied. As Reynolds notes, this sudden hiding behind copyrights is an add position for Scientific American to adopt,

Moreover Scientific American was, if I recall, quite unsympathetic to efforts by the Pentagon to use classification to silence critics of various missile-defense programs. But apparently the republishing, with credit, of its critique on the website of the preson criticized was too much to bear.

Did Scientific American fear that it would lose newsstand sales because of Lomborg's use (which I would call "fair use") of its criticisms? Or was it afraid that Lomborg's response would seem more persuasive if it were presented in tandem with the criticisms to which he was responding? Since the first fear seems ludicours, the second fear seems likely to be the true motivation -- however badly that reflects on Scientific American's commitment to free and open interchange of ideas.

This writer is not as certain about hte magazine's motivation, but it is interesting to note that this puts Scientific American in the same copyright bed with the Church of Scientology.

Like Scientific American, the Church of Scientology threatens lawsuits against any critic who dares to reproduce any of its copyrighted material in order to criticize Scientology.

Mighty fine company Scientific American is keeping these days.

Source:

Free speech under attack. Glenn Reynolds, March 6, 2002.

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