Category: access

an old chestnut from Bruce Sterling

Posted on by jessamyn
Speaking of free-as-knowledge [nod to Melvil Dewey], here is an old speech by Bruce Sterling about the intersection of money and the public good, and the benefits of Deep Archiving, when he spoke to LITA in 1992.

People talk a lot about the power and glory of specialized knowledge and technical expertise. Knowledge is power — but if so, why aren’t knowledgeable people in power? And it’s true there’s a Library of Congress. But how many librarians are there in Congress?

mickey mousing the whole damned world – copyright in australia

Posted on by jessamyn
Oh hey, while you were watching the debates, the US and Australia were entering into a free trade agreement. What does this mean for libraries? Australians suddenly need to shell out a whole bunch more money [generally to businesses and media companies] to use intellectual property that was previously in the public domain.

“Dr Rimmer described the changes as a victory for corporate America over Australia’s public interest, and contradicted the Intellectual Property Review Committee’s recent finding there was no evidence to support a copyright extension. He said Project Guttenberg Australia, an online respository of public domain works, was likely to be among the first to suffer.”