[Foundation-l] WMF/EFF and Copyright extension

[Brian McNeil]

Well, it turned out that when we thought we were going to interview Erik of
the EFF we were turning up for a FOSDEM 2008 party. :D

I'm waiting on Michael getting the audio from the hour-long interview online
or emailed to me to put online, but he was leaving to DJ a party in Leuven
last night so likely won't be up early this morning.

Apart from Erik Josefsson, the EFF European Affairs Coordinator, we
interviewed Becky Hogge of the UK's Open Rights Group and Eddan Katz, the
EFF's International Affairs Director. Turns out Eddan and Mike Godwin know
each other well so I recommended Eddan get in touch with Mike to discuss how
the WMF can help oppose Commissioner McCreevy's proposed changes to
copyright law.

As many will be aware, a similar measure was proposed in the UK and
rejected. For more details on this people might want to read the Gower
report which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/bvds2. This details that
there are no sound economic grounds for the proposed extension and thus the
proposal within the UK was rejected.

I've made a start on our Wikinews article for this
(http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_interviews_the_EFF_and_ORG_on_EU_propo
sed_copyright_changes), I'm waiting on getting the audio and due to people
speaking at great length it won't be a transcript but a sum up with
appropriate quotes.


Brian McNeil