Hello, all:
Might there be interest in organizing a webinar with Dean Baker? He
advocates citizen-directed subsidies for media, with the recipients
required to place all they produce in the public domain. Part of his
(2016) book "Rigged" summarizes research suggesting that US intellectual
property law, especially changes over the past 50 years, have violated
their purpose under the US Constitution: "To promote the progress of
science and the useful arts."[1] He's a co-founder of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He appeared Oct. 3 on a
Forum I organized on the "Local Journalism Sustainability Act",[2]
currently before the US Congress.
If the Public Policy Group for Wikimedia has not already talked with
him, it might be smart to ask for his input. With luck, you might be
able to arrange a webinar and maybe even arrange for him to testify
before appropriate committee(s) in Brussels. His help could be
instrumental in limiting inappropriate grants of rights to major media
organizations. Alternatively, he might help get any such grants
conditioned on future research, which he could help design and manage.[3]
Spencer Graves, PhD
Journalist, 90.1 FM,
KKFI.org, Kansas City Community Radio
and
Founder,
EffectiveDefense.org
4550 Warwick Blvd 508
Kansas City, MO 64111
[1] pp. 120-127 (127-134 of 263 in the PDF) of Baker (2016) Rigged: How
Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to
Make the Rich Richer (Center for Economic and Policy Research),
available for free at "https://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm". I just
added a summary of that book to the Wikipedia article on him.
[2]
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Local_Journalism_Sustainability_Act
[3] If you like the idea of a webinar, I could see if we could arrange
co-sponsorship by organizations like
FreePress.net and the Center for
Media and Democracy.