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OML Archives-
Subject: Re: copyreich - Sun, 21 Jan 1996 20:49:42 -0500
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 20:49:42 -0500
From: Jim Martin <flatland@mail.mcn.org>
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: copyreich
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
I'm in agreement with Kenn and Jogg regarding the copyright situation. There is
no sense tangling with Higgins and her lawyer Kolleeny if the OML might suffer.
Kolleeny has sent me several letters threatening suit. The last arrogant letter
was addressed to me and Eva Reich, regarding her statement in Flatland #12 that
Contact With Space is in fact public domain. Eva said that Reich placed Contact,
along with several other documents, under the title "The Suppressed and Secret
Evidence, Volumes 1-5," into the court records and they still have copy at the
First District Federal Court of Appeals in Boston. The full set can be had for
about $180, a little more than what it costs to buy Contact (actually Volume 3
of the Suppressed and Secret Evidence) from the WR Museum (in the hard back
edition). My rely to this letter will appear in Flatland #13. For Eva's part,
she started to write a reply but thought better of it. It began, "I recieved
your letter like a whiff from the grave..."
I also published a court document Reich wrote called "New Laws Needed to
Restrain Pathological Power Drunkeness." Kolleeny made no comment about that.
There are many articles Reich wrote that are clearly in the public domain, and
we are coming closer to 75 years past the time when Reich started writing.
ANYTHING written or published over 75 years ago is public domain. Many of
Reich's political writings appeared without copyright and sometimes even under
psuedonym, and have never been republished by Higgins, and are thus open to
anyone for republication and translation. That's how the Sex-Pol book was
published without any problems with Higgins.
I believe that Higgins has mismanaged the estate to the extent that she is open
to a seious challenge. Both Jim DeMeo and I have offered to assist the WRF to
publish trade paperback versions of Reich's important books, gratis. Higgins
could publish them under her own flag, and I assure you the profits would
maintain the property at Orgonon. What concerns me is Higgins' legacy of
tampering with the original writing. It started when she decided that Theodore
Wolfe's heirs should be cut out of any royalties regarding Wolfe's translations.
These translations were hammered out under Reich's supervision; they argued over
every word, acording to Eva Reich. Subsequent translations were apparently
farmed out to some New York translation bureau; so in some books "middle class"
becomes "middle layer" and so on. The original German translator of Passion of
Youth tells me that Higgins asked him to translate (sic! these memoirs were
written in German) from the American edition. He refused, and asked for copies
of the original. She sent them, but he noticed that some of the handwriting was
different than Reich's, possibly his brother, Robert's. So Passion of Youth is a
scramble.
Beyond Psychology is the final insult to those seriously interested in keeping
Reich's work available. Higgins took a very narrow view of the will's
instruction to "keep the writings for 50 years." Usually, this is to protect
those mentioned in the writings who might still be alive and embarassed by the
revelations. Beyond Psychology is full of embarassing revelations; it's the most
unflattering view of Reich yet published. How did Higgins decide what to
publish, and what was left out? We might never know. Higgins believes that the
sleeping masses are not yet ready for Reich's later, controversial work. Or
perhaps they embarrass her.
This posthumous publishing, much like the "new" Beatles song, bears a
resemblance to "table-tapping" as Kenn Thomas pointed out to me.
Higgins has said that she doesn't want to give people the impression that Reich
was ever a Marxist revolutionary. So she has consistently diluted his political
writing. Reich was definitiely a Marxist revolutionary between 1925 and 1928.
Much of his later animosity toward red fascists comes from personal reflection.
Another document, a volume of the previously mentioned "Suppressed and Secret
Evidence", was written by Eva Reich's husband, Bill Moise, and typed up by Eva.
It was called "The Red Thread of Conspiracy". This document bears on the
question, what did Reich have to do with conspiracies? He was the victim of one.
"Red Thread" is a detailed archive of the attack on Reich in the media and
academia, both in Norway and the US. The archive shows how similar all these
attacks were in phraseology, and it documents hard connections between the
snipers. It's very specific. For instance, Ewen Cameron, head of McGill
University (Montreal) CIA-funded mind control center there, wrote that Reich was
a quack and that he should be stopped. Another trout in the milk.
Eva and her daughter, Reynate, gave me permission to republish "Red Thread of
Conspiracy", (by Bill Moise) but obviously I'm reticent because Higgins
threatens you with or without justification. But I've researched the matter, and
unless you pay someone's social security, and they sign over a specific contract
saying they renounce copyright, their writing is their writing. So Moise's work
could be posted here with Eva's permission. Maybe I'll post it on Flatland's web
site. I certainly don't want to jeopardize the OML.
I have a scanner but OCR is time consuming and innaccurate; and I support the
fact that revenues of the writing goes to support the WFR even if I don't always
agree with the exectutrix. My bet is that Higgins won't go for the CD-Rom idea
because it makes too much sense.
-Jim Martin
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