I’m sorry if my question somehow offended you, but it seems to me that copyrighting the lectures of a man like Feynman is not only a crime to the curious and a disservice to humanity, but probably also against the would-be wishes of the man himself. Especially if the copyright is held by someone other than Feynman’s heirs (although, admittedly, it might not be). What right do people who did not write or deliver the lecture have to restrict its access and profit from it? Especially since it was obviously intended to educate people, and presumably as many as possible. And if I thought for a moment that the book cost was going to some poor shmuck grad student who was transcribing tapes and making diagrams, rather than to some publishing exec, I would send them a big fat check. Of course, I do not expect David and Judith Goldstein to be forced to publish their accompanying memoir, commentary, and diagrams for free online – this is their work and they can do with it what they wish – but the fact that words spoken in a room filled with people by a man whose goal was to bring scientific enlightenment to the masses should be restricted from general public access by a third party is infuriating.
I realize I could get off my lazy ass and go over to the library to check it out; I had just hoped that such valuable, creative, and inspirational teaching would be available freely and conveniently to the public online. And it is not the fact that it disturbs my laziness that really bothers me – I have a healthy relationship with the library and will not be greatly troubled to have to go there – but I had hoped to send the link to several dozen friends and coworkers. I hope you appreciate that sending them a recommendation of a book will not get a tenth as many of them to read it. And it is always good to have further links at the ready to help argue, refute, and educate those who have been undereducated in science, and this would have been a doozy. However, if the people who reconstructed the lectures did so out of avarice, so be it, but I had hoped that they did so out of admiration and respect for the man and his wonderful teaching style, and the hope that the lecture would reach as large an audience as possible. I know that I would gladly spend hours reconstructing lectures from his archival material, merely in the hope that more people could learn from this brilliant man. I had guessed that his former graduate students, friends, and co-faculty at Caltech would have felt the same way. Apparently I was wrong.
I know that I can find the works of Newton, Darwin, Copernicus, Galileo and many others online – at the fingertips of the curious at a moment’s notice. In my opinion, Feynman’s insights were as brilliant, and as impressively presented, as any scientist you could name, and his works should be, I feel, similarly easily available. I realize that he hasn’t been dead for 200 years, and that this influences the state of affairs, but I am still disappointed. In this present culture where superstition and pseudoscience are saturating the free media of television and the Internet, it seems – seemed – logical that those who support the spread of scientific thinking and the combat of ignorance, as I had supposed the people at Caltech to be, would be eager to make this and similar lectures available. Unfortunately, I was apparently mistaken in this as well. I’m sorry if this opinion offends anyone, but this man is a hero of mine, and I feel that this is entirely antithetical to what he stood for.
