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.