While Wikipedians ramble on about "Power Structures: Who and How?" perhaps those who care about the mission (rather than who gets to decided what to do if Sue Gardner suddenly "gets hit by a truck") might consider the implications of an ongoing debate taking place at the U.S. House of Representatives. This debate concerns the future of an enormous corpus of orphan works.
This problem is very real. According to
The results can be devastating. Years ago I edited a book, Israel Before Israel: Silent Cinema in the Holy Land, written by a scholar at the Spielberg Film Archive at the
Imagine the problem in the
Print materials are no less subject to gradual disappearance. Without the hindrance of potential copyright on these works, modern technology could enable millions of people to participate in efforts to preserve these works for posterity. Just look at Project Gutenberg (and Distributed Proofreaders) or Wikisource for two examples of how this can be achieved. But as a report by the CSPD notes, "… many modern media simply do not last as long as the copyright term." The situation is getting worse, not better.
Now, I am not a lawyer, nor am I qualified to perform a risk analysis about the possible consequences of adopting orphan works. Regardless, it seems to me that this issue is far more compatible with the mission of the WMF—"the sum of all human knowledge" and all that—than petty bickering over Volunteer Councils and power structures,
9 comments:
It lost sight of the mission when it became profitable to sell out.
This is what happens when you create a top-10 website based around altruistic ideas...those ideas tend to be go away with time.
The cost of preservation on that scale would be vast. The foundation can issue statements in favor of makeing the situation less legaly problematical but not much more than that.
Copyright isn't in any case the only problem here. Simply documenting what you have will result in the destruction of of a certian amount of cellulose nitrate filmstock since some will have reached the point where it will explode when you open the can. That and the cost of say digitalisation means that there are a number of PD film collections (crown copyright expired) that are slowly being lost
First of all, I do agree with you. The cost of film preservation is high, and requires highly specialized work, such as that being done by the NFPF and NFPB. This is hardly something that Wikipedia volunteers should be doing. There are, however, many ways that individuals can help: see http://www.filmpreservation.org/ for details.
On the other hand, texts are an entirely different matter. It seems to me that a wiki would be an ideal tool to catalog existing orphan texts, summarize their contents, and keep track of their status, at least until the surrounding issues are resolved satisfactorily.
And of course, there is awareness and pressure that as vast an organization such as the WMF can exert to resolve the issue of orphan works. After all, they are a key component of the sum of human knowledge. And it goes toward meeting the mission far more than simply adding more titles to people or bickering over social events.
When Jimbeau declared Jihad against Fair-Use materials, is the point at which he placed the copyright paranoids in charge of the WMF. There is no going back to the carefree old days now.
Copyright Paranoia and Patent Trolling represent a new form of protectionism; Intellectual Protectionism. Just as classic protectionism prolonged and intensified the world depression of the 1930's, so will Intellectual Protectionism, hamstring the global , information-based economy and worsen the current depression into which we are sliding. In the process, it also, as you point out Danny, stores away our history and our heritage to be forgotten.
So who wants cake?
Here's yet another example of history being locked away (literally in this case) to be potentially lost. Thanks, in part, to Jimmy's buddy Billy Gates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aou6c2MOmg
The answer is: it's entirely in keeping with the mission, it needs someone to pick up the ball and run with it.
(It's the open source question and answer "Hey, someone should do this." "Cool, thanks for taking it on!" Or, in Wikipedia terms: {{sofixit}}.)
It's certainly something I pay attention to in a dilettantish manner, though doing it in the US first will probably produce the biggest worldwide bang for the buck.
Wikimedia's certainly had some success in getting current organisations to be less dickish about copyright, e.g. the ACS over CAS numbers, and helping the physicists upset with the APS. Wikipedia's the 800lb gorilla of free content, and has done pretty well getting a long way with just a quiet word.
So what you are saying, Davey, is; the bonfires are still going but fewer books are being cast into them.
The French Wikimedia chapter is working on such issues: orphan works and copyright terms.
The head of the chapter has already been heard by the governmental commission on orphan works (a commission of CSPLA).
Sadly, due to very limited manpower, the chapter is not doing all that it would like to on these issues.
For some more info about the legislation (not the preservation issue), see www.orphanworks.net. Testimony and statements of interested parties is also available.
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