[Foundation-l] EU wants to increase musicians' and singers'copyright to 95 years

[Brian McNeil]

I will be attending an EFF meeting next Friday in Brussels to (a) report on
their plan of action against these measures for Wikinews and (b) Try and
find out how WMF can work with them to oppose this issue (I'll probably get
a migraine trying to avoid COI). I would welcome advice on the latter from
all on the list. If we can stand up to a 100k+ petition to remove images of
the prophet Mohammed, what can we do if we run our own petition to oppose EU
copyright extension?

I hope to have an article up over the following weekend that could be used
to inform people and persuade them to sign a petition and comment on the
proposed legislation. Serious headaches keeping my bias out of it, but
remember...

We are Wikinews
We are there
We report and publish
Expect us.

:-P


Brian McNeil

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brian McNeil
Sent: 15 February 2008 11:25
To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] EU wants to increase musicians' and
singers'copyright to 95 years

I'm based just outside Brussels, if anyone can think of any way I can help
with this let me know. Eg, deliver a petition.


Brian McNeil

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Lars Aronsson
Sent: 15 February 2008 10:42
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] EU wants to increase musicians' and singers'
copyright to 95 years

David Gerard wrote:

> I mean in terms of what does and doesn't constitute political 
> lobbying.

The Swedish chapter, where I'm a board member, is a Swedish 
membership organization and should have no formal problems with 
doing political lobbying.  The bylaws state we cannot take sides 
with political parties ("partipolitiskt obunden" = we promise to 
remain independent of political parties), but we certainly can 
express our views on issues that relate to our mission, the 
promotion of free knowledge.

However, since new Swedish copyright legislation is introduced by 
directive from the European Commission, any successful lobbying 
would have to take place in Brussels and not in Stockholm.  I know 
the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is active in Brussels, 
and cooperates with the Free Software Foundation-Europe (FSF-E). 
Rather than sending our own lobbyists to Brussels, perhaps it 
would be smarter to join their cause?  Would that be a problem?


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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