[Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

[Rob Seaman]

This is one of the more interesting IP initiatives I've heard of,  
even simply as an intellectual exercise.  Even better if it actually  
happens.

I'll add two suggestions to the wish list.  First a purely selfish  
plea for content lost:  the Voyager Company catalog of electronic  
media.  This is almost a recursive request since several Voyager  
titles were themselves exercises in freeing legacy works.  I'll lose  
access to the titles on my shelf whenever Apple ceases support for  
OS-9.  Some, like "With Open Eyes", are great works by the standards  
of any medium.  Presumably there are many other publishers from the  
early, perhaps pre-internet, days of electronic media whose  
historically significant content is at risk.

A more revolutionary suggestion is to open up the technical standards  
process.  Many international standards are proprietary, such as  
ISO-8601 that any of you who were engaged in Y2K remediation efforts  
must surely be familiar with.  Familiar with, but perhaps have never  
seen a copy of, because they charge real bucks.  Another example just  
from the area of timekeeping is ITU-R TF.460-6.  What is this you  
say?  The internationally recognized (e.g., by our State Dept.)  
definition of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).  UTC underlies  
standard civil time throughout the world.  Here is a theater-of-the- 
absurd quote from the minutes of a recent ITU meeting of their  
working party 7A:

	"After the introduction of the document the WP-7A counsellor
	informed WP-7A that a preliminary document i.e. the PDRR,
	could not be circulated beyond WP-7A according to ITU-R
	resolutions nor could the currently in effect Recommendation
	ITU-R TF.460-6, be attached to the SRG report with an
	explanation of proposed changes since all ITU-R
	Recommendations are only sold by the ITU-R."

To give you a sense of the kind of service opening this standard up  
would provide, the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) is  
debating removing any connection between UTC (i.e., the time on your  
wall, your wrist, your cell-phone and your laptop) and the motion of  
the Sun in the sky, by eliminating leap seconds.  Small in the short  
term.  World-changing in the long term.

Vast number of other standards documents that underlie the  
infrastructure of the modern world are similarly protected behind  
proprietary walls.  I recall a piece from the early days of Wired  
magazine describing one noble soul's fruitless efforts to convince  
ISO to loosen their proprietary policies.  Actually, there is a third  
suggestion – buy up the rights to back issues of Wired and other  
"popular" journals, not just the academic literature.  Anybody who  
has tried to navigate wired.com to find their rare precious nuggets  
would thank you!

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory