What I would very much like to see is the purchase and release of
images that are themselves in the public domain, but are still locked
in a stranglehold by museums and libraries that claim they have
copyright on the photographs of those images. This is particularly
true in the UK where museums and libraries typically charge large
fees for reproductions, then large fees for using the images;
sometimes the claim for copyright of the photographs of materials in
the public domain is also made in the USA--where Bridgeman vs Corel
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_vs_Corel) has set a precedent
but hasn't been endorsed by the Supreme Court; and sometimes this
claim for copyright is made in Canada as well. I don't know a lot
about other countries, but probably there are similar issues all over
the world: large organizations that are supposed to be stewards of
cultural history in fact are hoarders of it. The result is that a
huge portion of our history is too expensive for many people to see
and and admire and study, and oftentimes too expensive or legally too
problematic for scholars to include in their published studies.
APM