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List:       wikipedia-l
Subject:    Re: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...
From:       Ray Saintonge <saintonge () telus ! net>
Date:       2006-10-24 0:17:10
Message-ID: 453D5B86.6050104 () telus ! net
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Maury Markowitz wrote:

>>Spending all this money on changing the law in the USA is imho largely a
>>waste of money.
>>    
>>
>And resources. I contribute to the Wiki to help provide an alternative to 
>the marketingspeak and lawyer-writen short-term memory that forms a 
>surprising amount of the 'web. Political lobbying is the sort of thing I 
>come to the wiki to avoid.
>
Some people don't mind doing that; they even find it fun.  That doesn't 
mean that you have to do it when there are so many other things here 
that you  might find more enjoyable.

>I still think everyone is much too focused on "big content". I'm much more 
>concerned about the huge amount of non-commercial content that gets stamped 
>with a copyright without the author having any idea of how that works. I 
>have posted on this before, and the answers were always "well that's what CC 
>is for". True as that may be, no-one's ever heard of it. _I_ never heard of 
>it until coming to the wiki.
>
I'm familiar with your point.  Too many of our colleagues prefer the 
risk of castration to the risk of even remotely breaking their 
uninformed vision of the law.

>Consider the millions of snapshots that are taken every week and posted on 
>the 'net. One or two of them would improve the wiki, I'm sure, but we can't 
>use them. Not because the snapshot-taker has any intension of making money, 
>but because it was copyrighted "by default" and they are completely unaware 
>of it. This has happened to me repeatedly when trying to get images for 
>articles. And contrary to the claims here, most librarians and archivists 
>are completely unaware of either the problem or the solutions.
>
As things stand that is a political issue.  The law clearly gives them 
copyright protection whether they want it or not.  Politicians need to 
consider this in dealing with orphan copyrights.  Unfortunately, we have 
too many admins whose willingness to deal with the problem shows them to 
have all the abilities they need to grovel with politicians.

>So I still think education would be a good use of these funds. Who cares 
>about the big media houses when there is so much content out there that's 
>free but shackled? Let's try to fix THAT problem, lets make sure people know 
>there is a better way.
>
I'm pessimistic.  The best education is for people to go ahead and do it.

Ec

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