Chris, This is an important issues & I would say we should definitely respond. I would offer to help but family health issues (& a ton of marking for work) mean I can't give mush time at present. I would suggest CILIP (http://www.cilip.org.uk/ ) in the UK and Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) more generally as useful organisations to consult with. Rod From: wikimediauk-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Chris Keating Sent: 27 December 2011 09:42 To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Govt consultation on copyright Dear all, The Government has recently announced a consultation on about changes to copyright law. This follows a review of the existing arrangements by Professor Hargreaves over the summer. http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-policy/consult/consult-live/consult-2011-copyright .htm Do people feel we should respond? (Or to reverse the question, can anyone see good reasons for us *not* to respond? Just to be clear, charities are quite allowed to do things like this so long as lobbying doesn't become their main purpose...) If we are going to respond, who would be interested in helping work on our response? Do you know other people who we should be working with or talking to on issues like this? Regards, Chris _____ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.1901 / Virus Database: 2109/4705 - Release Date: 12/26/11

On 27 December 2011 09:42, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: I haven't read the consultation documents yet, but as a general rule I think we should respond to any consultation about topics relevant to us. It's a good way to get the relevant people to recognise our name and to make sure they consider the impact of their decisions on a section of our society, culture and economy that is very easy to forget due to so few people really understanding it.

On 27 December 2011 09:42, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: With a lute perhaps? Fiddling around the edges while copyright burns. The whole orphan works issue. Or the abolition of copyright for the little guy to give it is proper name. Its simply a predictable result of the insanely long copyright terms we have at present. The rest is much the same 172 pages of fiddling with little to no actual significance. Better ways to spend our time mostly. So far the only thing I've found that might be of any real interest to us is the proposed Copyright Notice Service. Since it would the power to clarify the law in certain areas it seems unlikely that it would be in our interests to see such a body to come into existence. At the present time we benefit from grey areas. The other thing we need to defend against is the Extended Collective Licensing stuff. We need to make sure that CC-BY-SA and the GPL and similar are recognised as opt outs and that attempts by any societies to claim in such cases should be classified as fraud and prosecuted as such. The rest is mostly relevant to libraries, archives and schools. Not us. -- geni