Further to our recent discussions on the "commons". The Bollier piece that I referred to is chapters 3, 4 and 7 "Reclaiming..." http://www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm
MG -----Original Message----- From: Ian! D. Allen [NCFreeNet] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: July 18, 2002 12:32 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: good articles on the "public information commons" http://www.publicknowledge.org/resources/conference-archives.php * Saving the Information Commons by David Bollier and Tim Watts (83 pages) "The result is a strangely bifurcated media universe. On the one hand, there is television, which is doing far less to serve the public interest than a generation ago despite the proliferation of channels. Broadcast news programs may be far more plentiful than twenty years ago, for example, but even veteran journalists question whether the market-driven flood of tabloid fare and sensationalism is serving the public or its own profession well." * Why the Public Domain Matters by David Bollier (30 pages) "This is unfortunate. Because of our conceptual blinders about the public domain, "copyright maximalists" have been able to extend the scope of copyright protection through many means: longer terms of copyright protection, new technologies that eliminate the public's fair use rights, attacks on the first-sale doctrine which otherwise lets users share or re-sell purchased copies of works and court rulings that give narrow interpretations to traditional copyright doctrines." * Trouble on the Endless Frontier by Seth Shulman (30 pages) "An oft-cited example from a previous, revered generation of scientists illustrates the virtual sea change that has occurred in our notions about ownership and proprietary claims in high-tech research. In 1954, when Jonas Salk developed a polio vaccine, he never for a moment considered the idea of pursuing individual ownership rights to the discovery. Nor did Salk imagine the idea of licensing the vaccine in an effort to personally control the direction of future research in the field. In fact, Salk's funder, the March of Dimes, prohibited patenting or the receipt of royalties on the results of its research projects. When Edward R. Murrow, the renowned television commentator of the day, asked, "Who will control the new pharmaceutical?" Salk replied that, naturally, the discovery belonged to the public. "There is no patent," he said. "Could you patent the sun?" This story bears repeating for the contrast it offers to the contemporary research environment. In the 1990s, for example [...]" -- -IAN! Ian! D. Allen Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page on the Ottawa FreeNet: http://www.ncf.ca/~aa610/ College professor at: http://www.algonquincollege.com/~alleni/ Board Member, TeleCommunities CANADA http://www.tc.ca/
