[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia and Politics

[wiki_tomos]

I would say there are things we can do to our 
direct benefits, and less costly. 

Regarding copyright, yes, perhaps many Wikimedians 
do have concerns about strong copyright protections 
like the lenths of protection, copyright for 
non-creative aspects of database, anti-circumvention
prohibition, and potential expansion of indirect 
infringements are discussed on mailinglists and on 
various pages. 

But copyleft licenses and their likes (such as 
CreativeCommons Public Licenses, not all of which are 
copyleft) enable us to deal with that strong protection. 

It is more directly to our benefit to promote GFDL, 
and we do not have to influence any legislation to do that. 

Also, it is very beneficial for us to help FSF to revise 
the GFDL so that we have more flexibility regarding its 
requirements, though I know English wikipedia interprets 
it rather liberally, and not having serious problems.

As a sidenote, regarding the length of copyright protection, 
I am not sure if the shortening of the protection period 
would result in an immediate release of currently protected 
works into the public domain. When I see the legal texts 
and relevant court cases, it is often decided that legal 
changes do not  affect the already copyrighted works 
unless it is beneficial to the authors and other copyright 
holders (But I know mostly about Japanese stuff, so it may 
be different for other countries). 

We can also try to solve digital divide without lobbying. 
We can promote and distribute our free content. How about 
a promotional team who can talk to potential users about 
our content and answer questions they might have, introduce 
them whom they should talk to for technical, legal, and 
other questions? 


Regards,


Tomos