[Wikipedia-l] Road to Hell [was Re: Dream a little...]

Mon Oct 16 09:32:13 UTC 2006

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:19:05 +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> There are lots of contents that could (and should) be free, but is 
> still under copyright.  Some are in the hands of museums and 
> archives, some in publishers, some in government agencies.

Many works are not even under copyright but locked up anyway.

> I think it would be a mistake to start pouring money into such 
> institutions, which should instead be forced (by a change of 
> copyright law or national policy) or encouraged to give it away. 
> We'd run out of money much too soon, and we'd build expectations 
> that old collections can bring profits.

That was exactly my first thought, too. This well-intentioned idea has a
great potential of being worse than useless by putting our long-term goals
further out of reach.

$100 million might be enough to make our lobbying efforts in Brussels and
Washington DC more effective for a decade or more. Large scale grass-roots
campaigns like the one over software patents in Europe succeed every now
and then as a one-time effort, but they are limited in their perseverance
against vested interests that have a lot more patience and money.

Unfortunately, lobbying is not as sexy as giving money to free a bunch of
pictures or texts. An alternative would be to carefully select and support
projects that don't create new, bad incentives. Project Gutenberg might be
a candidate.

Roger