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Gisle Hannemyr | 1 Apr 2009 08:40
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Re: Collaboration for public domain flowcharts

I think there is another similar effort, coordinated by Jonathan Gray
<jonathan.gray@...> of the Open Knowledge Foundation,
to create such flowcharts. I don't know if there are any grounds
for collaboration, but check it out:
  http://okfn.org/wiki/PublicDomainCalculators

===
Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
> Hi everyone, [crossposted from pd-calculators list]
>
> Back when we started working on PDwiki, we wrote a flowchart for
> Canadian copyright terms as a starting point for the algorithms for
> calculating when a work enters the public domain. I wrote it using the
> open source diagramming software DIA. You can find the current version
> of the flowchart online here, along with its source:
>    http://blog.kaplan-myrth.ca/updates-to-the-canadian-copyri
>    More on PDWiki: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Pdwiki
>
> I've been thinking about how I can help kickstart similar efforts
> elsewhere. One way might be to pare down the Canadian flowchart to a
> basic template that will serve as a starting point for other
> countries. Or, if there aren't enough commonalities among
> jurisdictions, perhaps it would be helpful for other projects just to
> start from the Canadian flowchart?
>
> Either way, I've put the Canadian flowchart on a collaborative space
> where other projects can work on it online:
>    http://www.glinkr.net/map/spot/1234/
>
> Glinkr's import/export feature doesn't work properly, but if you
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Gisle Hannemyr | 1 Apr 2009 08:48
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Re: Collaboration for public domain flowcharts

Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
> One way might be to pare down the Canadian flowchart to a
> basic template that will serve as a starting point for other
> countries.

I think a general problem with the Canadian PD flowchart, and other similar
effort originating on the American continent, are that they only
address economic rights and seem to ignore moral rights.
--

-- 
Gisle Hannemyr ( http://hannemyr.com/ )
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Ulrike Elteste (Mahlmann | 1 Apr 2009 12:34
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German Federal State announces economic stimulus package aimed at IT industry and at enriching Public Domain

The government of the German Federal State of Hesse has announced a new spending programme to stimulate the
economy of Hesse in the current financial and economic crisis. Hesse’s Prime Minister, Roland Koch,
and several members of his cabinet will jointly present today a 1.7 bn EUR economic stimulus package
called “Hesse 2.0” aimed at the state’s IT and media industry. The spending is scheduled to begin
already in 2009. 

According to a press release issued by the office of the Prime Minister of Hesse, the money from the current
economic stimulus packages of both the Federal government and the government of the State of Hesse will go
mainly to the automotive and construction industries, “and that is a good thing. However, it is
important to also provide the IT industry, a modern and seminal industry sector, with a stimulus.” The
press release denies any nexus with the recent breakdown of an important part of the IT infrastructure of
the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), thought by many to be due to a terrorist act by
the IT industry, which is feeling neglected in the current crisis. BAFA is responsible for the payment of
the “break-up-your-old-car-and buy-a new-one subsidy”, which is the best-known part of the German
Federal Government’s current economic stimulus package.

One major part of the new package is the plan to digitalize all non-personal public sector (i.e., publicly
financed) information and to make it available online in open formats for use and re-use by citizens
including providers of commercial services. “The aim of this package is not to blindly throw money at
the economy just for the sake of doing something. It is an instrument of a modern economic policy”, the
press release states. “We are making possible the development of new and innovative services.
Services innovation not only makes services firms internationally competitive, but also allows them to
be ‘enablers’ and ‘change agents’ and thereby the mechanisms through which much innovation
takes place in other traditional industries and across the economy.” The release cites as an example
the added-value services based on Google Earth.

Another element included in the package is the safeguarding and digitalisation of libraries’ and
archives’ repositories. “The recent collapse of the Municipal Archive in Cologne (see
http://www.ksta.de/html/artikel/1236100099706.shtml), which not only killed two people but also
destroyed priceless items of our historical heritage, has alerted us to the fact that even the
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Kristian Rink | 1 Apr 2009 13:00

Re: German Federal State announces economic stimulus package aimed at IT industry and at enriching Public Domain

Am Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:34:05 +0200
schrieb "Ulrike Elteste (Mahlmann)" <Ulrike.Mahlmann <at> gmx.de>:

[...]
> on the Internet. The government strongly encourages the holders of
> the repositories to hire people from among the unemployed to
> contribute to this very labour-intensive work. ---- 
> 
> I’m so sorry, but I’m from Continental Europe and so this is only an
> April Fool’s Day joke. 

But quite a good one compared to others I have stumbled upon so far
today. Anyway, just one thing on that:

> Who says that the money from the economic stimulus packages must be
> spent on economically pointless sales promotion activities like the
> idiotic German “break-up-your-old-car-and-buy-a-new-one subsidy”? 

Problem being however that, so far, people still aren't up for this,
and politicians obviously have to cater for a (dumb? blind? ignorant?)
majority, proving immediate action and responses rather than well
thought-out conceptions or even strategies (after all, there are some
elections in Germany in 2009 and any strategy approach surely won't pay
off anymore before that). Of course it is annoying... of course one
again and again gets upset seeing loads and loads of money stuffed down
the throats of an old industry, seeing money and effort spent on saving
large companies while quietly accepting smaller ones ceasing away,
spending no second thought on whether or how we eventually could do
with a more sustainable, more future-proof approach to actually
creating a new, more stable economy rather than keeping up old
(Continue reading)

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Andy Kaplan-Myrth | 1 Apr 2009 19:12
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Re: [CCi] Collaboration for public domain flowcharts

Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
> Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
>> One way might be to pare down the Canadian flowchart to a
>> basic template that will serve as a starting point for other
>> countries.
> 
> I think a general problem with the Canadian PD flowchart, and other similar
> effort originating on the American continent, are that they only
> address economic rights and seem to ignore moral rights.

I don't see that as a problem -- where there are moral rights in 
Canada, they run for the same term as the economic rights. Remember, 
this flowchart is not supposed to help figure out the *scope* of 
copyright in a work, just the *term*.

You also wrote:
> I think there is another similar effort, coordinated by Jonathan Gray
> <jonathan.gray@...> of the Open Knowledge Foundation,
> to create such flowcharts.

Yes, this is part of that effort, and I think the Canadian flowchart 
is the only one published there so far. I cross posted this 
collaboration request to the pd-calculators list as well.

Cheers,
Andy	

--

-- 
Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., LL.B.
Manager, Law & Technology, University of Ottawa
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Gisle Hannemyr | 1 Apr 2009 22:06
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Re: [CCi] Collaboration for public domain flowcharts

Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
> Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
>> Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:

>>> One way might be to pare down the Canadian flowchart to a
>>> basic template that will serve as a starting point for other
>>> countries.

>> I think a general problem with the Canadian PD flowchart, and other
>> similar effort originating on the American continent, are that they
>> only address economic rights and seem to ignore moral rights.

> I don't see that as a problem -- where there are moral rights in
> Canada, they run for the same term as the economic rights. Remember,
> this flowchart is not supposed to help figure out the *scope* of
> copyright in a work, just the *term*.

That's nice.
But what if they do not coincide?

In Norway, moral rights are perpetual, they never expire.
So the Norwegian flowchart for when a work enters the public domain
is very simple: It will never happen.

On the other hand, economic rights expire (in most cases) 70 years
after the death of the longest living author. As a consequence, I find
that knowing the date when economic rights expire for a work more
relevant than the non-existing "public domain" datum.
--

-- 
Gisle Hannemyr ( http://hannemyr.com/ )
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Eric Steuer | 1 Apr 2009 22:09

Press Release: Esther Wojcicki Becomes Creative Commons Board Chair

PDF attached; text below
==

Esther Wojcicki Becomes Creative Commons Board Chair

San Francisco, CA — April 1, 2009

Noted educator, education innovator, and journalist Esther Wojcicki
today became Chair of the Creative Commons (CC) Board of Directors,
taking over from founding board member James Boyle. Wojcicki first
joined the board of Creative Commons last July. Creative Commons is a
world wide non-profit organization that promotes the creative re-use
of intellectual and artistic works.

“I am thrilled to take on this new role,” said Wojcicki. “I strongly
believe that the Creative Commons approach to sharing, reuse, and
innovation has the power to totally reshape the worlds of education,
science, technology, and culture at large. My main goal as chair is to
make average Internet users worldwide aware of Creative Commons and to
continue building the organization’s governance and financial
resources. I am also very eager to help CC’s education push at high
school and college journalism programs worldwide.”

Wojcicki is a journalism and English teacher at Palo Alto High School,
where she leads one of the largest high school journalism programs in
the nation. She leads a variety of award-winning journalism projects,
including a newspaper, a magazine, a website, a television program,
and a sports publication. Over the past 20 years, these projects have
won Gold and Silver Crowns from Columbia Scholastic Press Association,
the PaceMaker Award and Hall of Fame Award from National Scholastic
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Andy Kaplan-Myrth | 1 Apr 2009 22:13
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Re: [CCi] Collaboration for public domain flowcharts

Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
> Andy Kaplan-Myrth wrote:
>> Gisle Hannemyr wrote:
>>> I think a general problem with the Canadian PD flowchart, and other
>>> similar effort originating on the American continent, are that they
>>> only address economic rights and seem to ignore moral rights.
> 
>> I don't see that as a problem -- where there are moral rights in
>> Canada, they run for the same term as the economic rights. Remember,
>> this flowchart is not supposed to help figure out the *scope* of
>> copyright in a work, just the *term*.
> 
> That's nice.
> But what if they do not coincide?
> 
> In Norway, moral rights are perpetual, they never expire.
> So the Norwegian flowchart for when a work enters the public domain
> is very simple: It will never happen.
> 
> On the other hand, economic rights expire (in most cases) 70 years
> after the death of the longest living author. As a consequence, I find
> that knowing the date when economic rights expire for a work more
> relevant than the non-existing "public domain" datum.

Right, in some jurisdictions they'll be different -- so in those 
places, the flowchart will need to be different, maybe significantly 
different.

What you wrote about Norway is all useful information that could 
easily be integrated into a flowchart showing the term for economic
(Continue reading)

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Ulrike Elteste (Mahlmann | 2 Apr 2009 10:11
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Re: German Federal State announces economic stimulus package aimed at IT industry and at enriching Public Domain

Hi Kristian,

> > I’m so sorry, but I’m from Continental Europe and so this is only an
> > April Fool’s Day joke. 
> 
> But quite a good one compared to others I have stumbled upon so far
> today. Anyway, just one thing on that:
> 

Thank you for taking the time to comment. 

> > Who says that the money from the economic stimulus packages must be
> > spent on economically pointless sales promotion activities like the
> > idiotic German “break-up-your-old-car-and-buy-a-new-one subsidy”? 
> 
> Problem being however that, so far, people still aren't up for this,
> and politicians obviously have to cater for a (dumb? blind? ignorant?)
> majority, (...)

I understand this feeling of resignation, I share it most of the time, but we must shake it off. Look,
President Obama is saying that "yes we can" let General Motors go the path of Chapter Eleven. And a real
piece of news from Hesse is that it started an initiative in the second chamber of the Federal parliament
(Bundesrat) lately to prevent the patenting of living organisms because it hurts small and medium-size
enterprises and farmers: http://tinyurl.com/dbuojw (boy, they definitely need an IT person, the
initial URL had 308 characers; if the link does not work go to the Ministry of Agriculture of Hesse and look
at "Pressemitteilungen", 25 March).

I'm convinced that this is a good moment and we need to seize it. Parliaments have decided upon huge economic
stimulus packages --- but don't know yet what to spend the money on, especially at the local level. They
will only place more flower pots in our pedestrian areas (after repairing our schools and universities,
(Continue reading)

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Bjorn Wijers | 2 Apr 2009 12:30
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Re: German Federal State announces economic stimulus package aimed at IT industry and at enriching Public Domain

Ulrike,

Thanks for this inspirational email!

I sincerely hope change can be made, but I'm somewhat skeptic especially after
hearing what the Dutch government after weeks of negotiation brought forward. I
fear that for changes to be embraced the system should allow and encourage
change, however general human nature fears change and thus change will only be
embraced if all else fails and even then with hesitation. My personal goal would
be to focus on 'getting things done' and hopefully this will perhaps an example
others might want to follow.

All the best,

grtz
BjornW

> The government of the German Federal State of Hesse has announced a new
> spending programme to stimulate the economy of Hesse in the current financial
> and economic crisis. Hesse’s Prime Minister, Roland Koch, and several members
> of his cabinet will jointly present today a 1.7 bn EUR economic stimulus
> package called “Hesse 2.0” aimed at the state’s IT and media industry. The
> spending is scheduled to begin already in 2009.
> 
> According to a press release issued by the office of the Prime Minister of
> Hesse, the money from the current economic stimulus packages of both the
> Federal government and the government of the State of Hesse will go mainly to
> the automotive and construction industries, “and that is a good thing.
> However, it is important to also provide the IT industry, a modern and
> seminal industry sector, with a stimulus.” The press release denies any nexus
(Continue reading)

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Gmane