1 Reply to James Read on Background-Independence Sebastian De Haro Trinity College, Cambridge CB2 1TQ, United Kingdom Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, United Kingdom In a recent talk 1 , James Read discusses three conceptions of background-independence: by Pooley, by Belot, and by myself, and criticises what he portrays as “De Haro’s account” of background- independence. While I am, of course, happy to see my work inspiring Read to think about a number of important issues on dualities: and while it is an honour to be discussed in a transatlantic seminar together with the likes of Pooley and Belot: Read, unfortunately, also misrepresents my views in three ways which are easily stated, objectively, as follows: (i) by failing to mention the fact that I have two, rather than just one, conceptions of background- independence, and what their aims and functions are; (ii) by removing essential parts in his quotation of one of my conceptions of background- independence, leading to an incorrect verdict over SR2; (iii) by confusing different kinds of diffeomorphisms and not reproducing my argument as to why a certain class of diffeomorphisms does not qualify as gauge symmetries, but rather as physical transformations. All of this results in a misrepresentation of my views: which are then criticised by Read and by some of the audience during the Q&A. For the above reasons, and because the video is available on Beyondspacetime’s YouTube channel, in this reply —which the PIs of the Beyondspacetime Project have kindly agreed to publish in this form— I point out what I consider to be the most important misrepresentations present in Read’s talk. My aim is, of course, not to discourage the line of work that Read proposes to undertake: which I applaud. I believe that there are some interesting ideas here. My aim is instead to dismantle the straw- man that has been set up as representing my ideas. In Section 1, I will explain briefly what my views are, independently of Read’s talk. In Section 2, I will show how my views are misrepresented by Read in the three ways mentioned above. I conclude with some general remarks, also by way of peace-making. A reader who has watched Read’s talk and is just interested in learning how my views were misrepresented, may wish to jump to Section 2, and just refer to Section 1 for clarification when needed. 1 https://www.youtube.com/c/BeyondspacetimeNet