Eric Eldred, an Internet Bookmobile driver and poster child for the public domain, was threatened with arrest for handing out free copies of Walden at Walden Pond:
Yesterday (July 8, 2004) I took the Internet Bookmobile to Walden Pond in
Concord, Mass. It was the 150th anniversary of H. D. Thoreau's book
"Walden." The Thoreau Society had a dawn to dusk reading.
After an hour of having readers print and take away free copies of "Walden,"
I was asked by the Walden Pond Reservation police to pack up and leave
and threatened with arrest. I left.
The park supervisor (Denise Morrissey, 978-369-3254) told me I could
not pass out free literature without a permit. And she would not give me
a permit because, as she explained, the state park gets money from a
concession by the Thoreau Society, which operates a store that sells
"Walden"–and I was competing with them by giving away free copies.
There is no place to park at Walden Pond except in the state parking
lot, for which I paid $5.
