Hello Massachusetts based compatriots!
Between an established proto-chapter, several academic institutions with
alined goals, and several luminaries living and working in the state, a
reasonable argument can be made that Massachusetts is the free culture
capital of the east coast.
We should totally leverage that.
I'd love to see Massachusetts join Florida and California, becoming the
third state to release the majority of government works into the public
domain. I think it's doable, but I think it will take time, and possibly
lobbyists and money and volunteer hours. In other words, I think it's a
worthy long term goal to work towards.
In the mean time, I'd like to put free culture on the Governor's agenda,
albeit in a comparatively minor role. The Governor's official Flickr stream
(
http://www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor) releases all work under a
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. The fact that it's a CC
license at all shows that someone, somewhere in the administration is
trying.
What I'd like to do is create a petition asking the administration to
release their photographs under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA) license, instead of
an NC one. I think it's an eminently achievable goal. The way I see it, we
need a few things to make it happen:
1) Research: We need to know exactly what we're asking for. Are we asking
for an executive order, or something less formal? Would this apply to
future administrations? Who in the Massachusetts State bureaucracy should
we be handing this petition to (i.e. whose responsibility does this fall
under, since I doubt it's going to go straight to the governor). Also, we
would do well to create a list of people we'd like to have sign the
document.
2) Petition writing: The petition needs to be well written. It needs to
explain our argument clearly and concisely. We need to point out the
benefits of making such a change. It needs to be professionally worded and
not sound like a rant. You get the idea.
3) Rallying: Before we even release the petition to the public, we're going
to want to make sure that all the signatories we want are on board, and
we're going to want them to be signing it they day that the petition goes
public, or even before then. Momentum is important. Momentum and a list of
names with cachet is even better.
Is anyone else interested in this? Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really
like to run with this, but I can't do it on my own.
Sven Manguard