BC Law IPTF Blog

This past weekend, my buddy Adam and I attended Wikimania 2006 at Harvard Law School. We mostly went to sessions on education and wikis because we are working with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and their librarians on integrating new technology into the library and the curriculum. But we also caught Brewster Kahle’s plenary presentation on the work he’s been up to.

Kahle founded, among other things, the Internet Archive. His goal these days is “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” Part of his platform engages U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzalez, in a suit seeking declaratory judgment, particularly against the Copyright Term Extension Act (”CTEA”).

Kahle is working on building digital libraries of all available human knowledge. In his way is the CTEA that is blocking his publishing of books written between 1964 and 1978. Prior to the CTEA, these books would be public domain in 2004. But the CTEA extended their copyright, regardless of the will of the copyright owners, for “effectually perpetual” terms. Civil Complaint for Declaratory Judgment, Kahle v. Gonzalez (Civil Case No. 04-1127).

Kahle argues that if we could allow these works to fall gracefully into the public domain, then projects such as his Digital BookMobile, which publishes print-on-demand books for $1 a pop, could thrive and the world will be a better place.

If copyright holders wish to continue their copyright, they may do so. But those who don’t, the holders of “orphan” works, should let their copyrights fall to the public domain. Allow a “conditional copyright regime” as opposed to the “unconditional” one established by the CTEA.

Without getting too bogged-down in the details to burden this blog post, I’ll say that he has a good idea. Lawrence Lessig has spoken similarly regarding this type of conditional regime, just as our own Joseph Liu.

But on top of all that, personally, I think [this is good]. As I’m spending my summer vacation time at a refugee orphanage in Southern Sudan, the universal availability of knowledge is so important. I’m further goaded to continue my backburner project of creating a repository of “open” children’s readings. Though I have my own comments regarding Kahle’s desire to put books from the 1800s into the hands of kids (what kid wants to read that stuff?), the idea of universal availability of knowledge is so key in this world.

Huzzah, Brewster!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 12:54 am and is filed under International, Education, Copyright, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.