[PGCanada] Ok: Good Talk: What to do?

[Michael Lockey]

A number of folk have been kind enough to respond to my suggestions.  (I 
can't help it: personally I hate people who come out of the blue and 
start giving advice to people who have done so much- all I can say is 
that, by preference, I am a shy person.)  (Checking his credibility at 
the door.)

A number seem ready to fight; others seem to think we're already doomed.

Personally, I think we CAN fight, but we gotta get organized- which goes 
against a lot of PG's ethos.  Too bad.  To stand alone on the field of 
sanctity is to doom ourselves as the latest Children's Crusade.  The 
trouble is that, with so many different, intelligent, voices, we can get 
bogged down in administrative trivia and hissy fights.

I really think we need to eyeball and discuss plans.  In someplace like 
TO we can get a concensus among a great number of people: as long as we 
understand that this is for convenience only, and no more important than 
a lone supporter in Kitimat, I can't see any harm in it.  But we gotta 
(IMHO) come up with a strategic directive to our fight.

My immediate and (almost) irrevocable need is to define and- in some 
cases, staff- the different stakeholders involved here.  I see them as 
the following:

Holders of Copyright: well represented, highly funded, and inimicable to 
the other stakeholders, who are:

Representatives of the Public Domain, (non-existant?) who should be 
arguing, IN TERMS OF POWER, CONTROL, and FINANCES, for the correct 
exploitation of PD;

and

Representatives of works covered under Copyright.  This is more 
difficult to visualize, but the reality is that Copyright is contrary to 
the wellbeing of the created works, and they should have representation, 
in the way that equal abstracts such as scenic beauty, endangered 
wildlife, or such, have their advocates.

But if we want to be thirty or forty individuals sitting around debating 
the whereness of the why, we'll at least be in a position to discuss how 
they haul our heritage away...


Michael Lockey