« freeing privacy reports | Main | man, i don't even get my name spelled correctly »

cutting libraries while killing the commons

June 12, 2003 10:32 AM - comments (5)

Commons-blog has a nice link to a story about Milwaukee libraries being defunded. Yet at the same time, extensions of copyright terms simply increase the cost of getting access to content. If every librarian signed our Reclaim the Public Domain Petition, then perhaps we could rebuild a public domain that could make the costs of libraries fall.

Posted on June 12, 2003 10:32 AM | | technorati

Comments (5)

June 12, 2003 11:46 AM Jesse Andrews:

Would it be useful to collect "old fashioned" signatures? Do lawmakers give digital petitions the same weight as paper petitions?

June 12, 2003 12:22 PM Phil Gengler:

I would imagine old-fashioned 'real' signatures would carry more weight, and I've never seen an online petition really accomplish anything, but if nothing else, this shows just how much support an idea like this has.

June 12, 2003 2:27 PM Ryan Mahoney:

I don't suppose there's a website out there where librarians like to hang out? Like slashdot for the geeks. If so, maybe somebody could get a post up there.

June 13, 2003 7:53 AM Pete:

Librarian.Net would be a good site to get in contact with. The woman who runs it seems very conscious of these issues and would probably be receptive to helping to get the word out.

One wonders what the costs are for single printings of books and what kind of overhead it would take to get a bindary outfitted to provide public domain works to patrons as needed... At what point is that cost effective and an improvement over the way things are done now?

Post a comment

By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize texts that were written before the computer age. The words that you see were taken directly from old texts that are being scanned and stored by the Internet Archive. This CAPTCHA helps proofread the books. If the sample is too hard to read, click the recycle button to get another two. A space between each word is required. And thanks for the comment and help.