[pp.int.general] Fwd: [FC-discuss] Fwd: Urgent -- Aaron was just arrested

[Pat Maechler aka Valio]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Christian Hufgard
<pp at christian-hufgard.de> wrote:
> On 21.07.2011 18:18, Betiel wrote:
>> Some times is not people the issue but the access to the material, and
>> obteining the right permits to move the documents to someplace to
>> digitalize.
>
> That's why the ones who are in access of the orginals can set up rules
> about the access. Having translated and signed the Public Domain
> Manifesto I believe that works that are in the public domain have to be
> free. But the manifesto describes and ideal world. And as a party (or
> many parties) we have to find ways to free material. Accessing it
> illegal and offering it in the internet is one way. But imho not the
> right way.

Legally speaking these works are in the public domain (at least in the
US), as they are not covered by copyright.
However - as discussed earlier - the original publisher put an effort
into scanning them.

The absurd situation here is, this: If I myself put some effort into
making an existing work more available to people that don't have
access yet (i.e. translating a book into another language or into
braille) I likely often won't get credit if I was not asked for it;
neither by the original work creator, nor by the guy who first
published it, because they want to keep the monopoly on it. That's
exactly one instance where you can see that the current legislation
creates a situation which leads to an inevitable "war on sharing" as
Stallman calls it.
The same applies to museums that don't want you to take & publish free
photographs of the works, even if you do it voluntarily.

In an ideal world not only creators, but publishers [of scientific
articles or sound recordings] as well would encourage voluntary people
to let them make it more accessible; especially when no copyright
applies anymore.

-pat