[Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain

[geni]

On 22 June 2011 19:40, Geoff Brigham <gbrigham at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously
> important role that the public domain plays in our mission to "collect and
> develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain,
> and to disseminate it effectively and globally."

Globally? Oh I think not. A situation where works are PD in the US,
Afganistan, and Iran is of pretty limited use if you want to
disseminate stuff globaly


>  We host millions of works
> in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search
> out and archive these works.  Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately 3
> million items in these cultural commons.

Ohh bad example. You haven't consulted commons policy have you? We
don't carry stuff on commons unless it is PD in the US and it's
country of origin.

>  To put it bluntly, Congress cannot
> be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever
> it finds it suitable to do so.

Parliament in the UK has had that power since 1710 when copyright was
invented. The world hasn't ended. Try undesirable.

> Such works belong to our global knowledge.

You can't copyright knowledge. The usual term used there is culture.

> For this reason, we join with the EFF and many others
> to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public domain

Nice line but the foundation does generally makes the attempt to
appear like it's aware of non US areas. Truth is of course that
congress can't impact my public domain one way or another.


-- 
geni