[Foundation-l] Comment on Copyright Orphans

Tue Apr 12 18:41:11 UTC 2005

Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Le Tuesday 12 April 2005 16:35, The Cunctator a écrit :
>  
>
>>We should be making an official comment on the issue of copyright orphans
>>now before the U.S. Copyright Office. The deadline is May 9.
>>
>>From http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/:
>>    
>>
>(...)
>  
>
>>This is clearly something the Wikimedia Foundation should officially weigh
>>in on.
>>    
>>
>I totally agree with this.
>
I already put my previous submissions into the mailing list.  It's No. 
697 in the records of the Copyright Office.  All 714 submissions may be 
read as pdf files.  Is there a way to do a text search for all those pdf 
files to see if any other submissions used the string "wiki"?

The current round of submissions is for responses to what has already 
been submitted.  In the sampling that I have looked at there seems to be 
a very strong something-needs-to-be-done trend. 

One observation that I have made about the submissions favouring the 
status quo is the emphasis on the rights of current authors, and seem 
not to mention the rights of the author's descendants at all.  Having 
Life + 70  really doesn't do anything for the authors themselves.  More 
ironic is their tendency to view proposed changes to the copyright 
regime as attempts by corporate interests to undermine the rights of 
authors and artists.  It seems to me that the corporate interests have 
sold them a bill of goods.

Another important article to read from "Wired" is this by Julian 
Dibbell: http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html  
There is a lot for many of us to learn from what is going on in Brazil.

Ec