[Commons-l] Copyright is hard (was Re: Professional photographers on Commons: sucess story)

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Nov 6, 2007 9:05 PM, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing is...
> Copyright is hard. It is a brick wall that is high, and I don't know
> of any way of getting around it easily or quickly that isn't cheating,
[snip]

We already have the most important tool to overcoming hard problems: People.

We have a huge number of experienced commons folks for which the
majority of typical copyright issues are *not hard*.

Yes, there are fuzzy gray corners all around the edges copyright which
are fundamentally hard, areas if anyone claims to know *for sure* they
are fools or they are lying.. but those generally aren't the areas
where most new users have problems.

We need to build better ways of connecting new users with friendly,
helpful, and knowledgeable community members. Once we have those many
of these issues will go away.

I don't mean to trivialize our challenges, for they are real and
substantial. Scaling our community while preserving the kindness and
knowledge we need to pull this off will not be easy.  But we have the
right components to start with, and I think that building a clear path
forward is within our ability.

What do people think of automatically assigning new users to a user
advocate who speaks their language? Something where experienced users
can sign in when they are around and new users will be assigned to
them?  Would that help?    I don't think we need to worry about
scaling it at first: if we are unable to assign advocates for
everyone, we could at least help some.. and that would be an
improvement.