[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

[Andrew Gray]

On 16/10/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > > I would like to gather from the community some examples of
> > > works you would like to see made free, works that we are not
> > > doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works
> > > that could in theory be purchased and freed.
>
> There are lots of contents that could (and should) be free, but is
> still under copyright.  Some are in the hands of museums and
> archives, some in publishers, some in government agencies.
>
> I think it would be a mistake to start pouring money into such
> institutions, which should instead be forced (by a change of
> copyright law or national policy) or encouraged to give it away.
> We'd run out of money much too soon, and we'd build expectations
> that old collections can bring profits.

Give this man a prize. It's happening already, though not with copyright per se.

A specific example: In the UK, the various county record offices have
a large number of deposits - papers that are held, catalogued, curated
and made available by them, but with the ownership kept private, and
handled as a long-term indefinite loan, anything from photograph
archives to manorial tax records. Every now and again, someone
withdraws one of these to sell it - you can get a goodish amount from
an American university, usually - and they're faced with the dilemma
of letting it go or trying to match the price offered.

By squeezing the pips you can usually get enough together to keep it.
Unfortunately, the first problem is that other depositors then say
"Cor, they got two million for that stuff? I'm taking mine to the
States too!", cue exodus of everything else - and potential depositors
start asking tricky questions like "Why should I leave this stuff with
you when I could just sell it to someone outright?"

(University archives aren't immune to this, but tend to mostly have
purchases, gifts and bequests rather than on-loan material...)

Probably the most efficient use of your money would be to bribe enough
people to pass a law fixing the orphan-work problem, but I don't think
that's an appropriate answer ;-)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk