[pp.int.general] Stallman's escrow for works other than software source code

[Felipe Sanches]

I agree with Richard Stallman when he talks about the duality of computer
software (compiled binaries versus source code) and its problematic
treatment in copyright laws: we need to guarantee public domain
effectiveness for software. We cant simply allow its source code to be
forever kept as secret while users are subjected to proprietary binaries
(which are hardly modifiable in a pratical manner) even after the binaries
have fallen into the public domain. An escrow proposal was made by rms but
we are still unsure about what would be the best approach to solve that
issue.

I'd like to raise awareness to a similar duality: multimedia productions.
Wouldnt it make sense for us to seek guarantees that production files will
be available when a movie falls into public domain? It would certainly make
derivative creative works easier to produce without the need of recreating
the whole thing from scratch.

Think about the open movies we've seen recently: i. e. "Elephants Dream", or
"Big Buck Bunny".
The creators of these movies have voluntarily released their "source code".
Wouldn't we want to have similar access to the production files of Tim
Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" in 2020, ten years after the release of the
movie? Or would we be satisfied with solely a legalized high definition
public domain copy of it in 2020?

Felipe "Juca" Sanches
Inkscape.org developer / FSF member / Brazilian Pirate Party
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