[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA

[Dominic McDevitt-Parks]

On 13 January 2012 09:45, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 13 January 2012 14:22, Bastien Guerry <bzg at altern.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > I still expect some of them to react in a way that will make them think
> > twice before participating to an upload project.  But maybe that's just
> > me being pessimistic.
> >
>
> ...
>
> In fact, quite the contrary, I would not be surprised if many individuals
> in GLAM (and other) organisations would privately be very supportive of us
> making such a principled stand because we are at liberty to make such
> statements in a way publicly funded organisations are not.
>
>
Indeed, there isn't much of a question where most people who work for
cultural institutions stand on the issue. Let's not forget that cultural
institutions, and especially libraries, are major holders of copyrighted
material, and they are put in the position of trying to make it available
for research and use while staying within the bounds of the law. Back in
November, the American Library Association, the Association of Research
Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries, which
collectively essentially represent the profession as a whole within the
United States, issued a joint statement against SOPA, which you can read
here: <http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/lca-sopa-8nov11.pdf>.
They highlight the fact that libraries could be subject to felony criminal
prosecution for unintended infringement for non-commercial purposes.

Dominic