On 05/10/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/5/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I wonder if we can use this sort of thing to
our advantage? "Look how many of the freely-available images of major
humanitarian operations have American flags all over them. Yes, I know
the French government gave more aid after the tsunami than the
Americans. But they didn't release ten thousand photographs of it all
as part of their normal practice. This sort of thing can pay off."
The problem is that most goverments hold the copyright on things of
significant value and as such are unlikely to release them directly
into the public domain. Most will consider it enough to allow use for
non comercail uses or for educational uses. Or will produce something
like the british crown copyright system.
Yes, but there's no requirement for anyone to go as far as the US and
release *everything* regardless. It wouldn't be impossible to come up
with some kind of a system where copyright was disclaimed on routine
work and most publications, with the government retains the right to
assert copyright at its discretion where it felt it would be
beneficial to do so.
(I think I remember seeing a study once, prepared by HMSO, about the
amount of money made by the UK government through copyrighted
material. It'd be interesting to see what proportion of that comes in
from trivial things)
The trick is arranging a system where it isn't worth their while to
copyright all the photographs and reports churned out by government
workers ;-)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk