Fighting to be free

CONCORD -- It was an idea that Henry David Thoreau could have loved: Earlier this month, with the 150th anniversary celebration of Thoreau's influential book "Walden," Eric Eldred tried to hand out free copies on the shores of the pond where the author had famously retreated from civilization.

Eldred, the driver and chief evangelist behind his Internet Bookmobile based in Derry, N.H., will soon roam the country teaching people how to download free books. What better way, he thought, to celebrate "Walden," the ultimate paean to self-reliance, than to show people how to make their own books?

But Eldred had barely driven his white-and-red camper into the parking lot of the Walden Pond Reservation and tacked up a handwritten sign reading "Free Walden" when a state park ranger asked him to leave. Eldred said he was told he needed a permit to hand out copies of the book, free or not, and would be arrested if he continued.

"Obviously, Thoreau didn't ask for government permission before he published 'Walden,' " said Eldred, sitting inside his bookmobile last week. "It seems absurd for me to go the government and have them look at the content and see whether it's approved or not. . . . It demeans the whole spirit of Thoreau's work."

Eldred, 60, has been seeking legal advice on whether the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, which oversees the Walden Pond State Reservation, is violating his constitutional right to free speech if it refuses to allow him to distribute the books.

Eldred became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War after he graduated from Harvard in 1966 and has long found inspiration in Thoreau's writing. He decided to keep fighting for Free Walden.

"I asked myself what Thoreau would have done," Eldred said.

The controversy has sparked debate around town and on Internet chat boards across the country, especially when Eldred said park officials were concerned that his free books would hurt sales at the Shop at Walden Pond, which sells copies of "Walden" in English, German, and Japanese, as well as black T-shirts with one of the author's most well-known exhortations: "Simplify, simplify."

Denise Morrissey, the park supervisor who told Eldred he had to leave, said her agency discourages competition from outsiders who could take away business from the two concessions that pay for a spot on the reservation: an ice cream truck and the gift shop run by the Thoreau Society.

"If you're going to give away books for free," she said, "it might take away business" from the shop.

Morrissey sees the spat as nothing more than a bureaucratic snag. Everyone who wants to do more at Walden than swim or walk the paths -- from filmmakers who want to make movies, to couples who wish to marry -- needs state permission, she said.

Eldred had no permit, and it was impossible for him to get one that day, Morrissey said. First she must sign off on permits, and then she submits them for approval to the conservation and recreation department.

"We try to be very, very sensitive about what kind of activities go on here," she said. "Walden has a unique image that needs to be upheld."

Morrissey said she would require more information about Eldred's enterprise before she could decide whether to recommend that he be allowed to give away books. She said she was startled to see him in the parking lot with his Internet Bookmobile.

"He had a generator," she said. "He had his big, mobile-home kind of vehicle."

Jayne Gordon, the executive director of the Thoreau Society, said she appreciates Eldred's work and doesn't think it would cut deeply into the profits of her group's book sales. But she relies on Morrissey's judgment, she said, to run the park.

Jonathan Zittrain, codirector of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, has advised Eldred to continue seeking a permit to hand out "Walden" at the pond. Zittrain, who was cocounsel for Eldred in a copyright case that went to the US Supreme Court, is optimistic that the state will see the value of Eldred's work.

"Thoreau, in many ways, stood for the integration of ideas with the physical environment," Zittrain said. "At the core, what Eric is doing is showing how ideas can become physical. To be able to produce 'Walden' at Walden, it's such an extraordinary bridge between the past and the present."

Eldred has proposed a compromise at Walden Pond: He would show people how to print the book themselves, and give free copies only to those who first bought a book from the Thoreau Society store. He had a similar arrangement with a Derry bookstore last month, where he parked the bookmobile near the store and gave away free books to customers who showed receipts from the store.

Eldred was the lead plaintiff in the copyright case decided last year by the Supreme Court. Eldred and his lawyers had asked the court to overturn a law passed by Congress in 1998 that extended the term of copyright protection for an additional 20 years. Under the old law, copyright protection generally expired 70 years after the death of the author. The court found the new law constitutional.

Eldred, who publishes books freely available in the public domain on his website, www.eldritchpress.org, is a former computer programmer who suffers from repetitive strain injuries and lives off Social Security disability payments.

Eldred lives in the bookmobile, now parked in the driveway of the Derry house where he once lived with his ex-wife. He is staying in New England until October, and making arrangements to visit schools before he heads south.

"I don't want to be really isolated," Eldred said. "I feel there's something productive that I can do to help society."

Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com.