On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 04:40:10PM +0200, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Greg Newby wrote:
More: If we decide to change the wording, we need a new one ("Free lunch" would anger the libertarian even more :-) ) that conveys the idea that PG is not just a free book download service.
Any forward progress on this, Marcello? I don't like "free as in beer," and have mentioned it once or twice.
I think there are plenty of alternatives: "Fostering the Public Domain" "Expanding the Public Domain" "Thousands of Free eBooks" "The World's Great Literature" "Produced by Thousands of Volunteers"
What about a rotating marquee?
Presently the PG site is just a place where people go to download books. I think we should make more of a political stance with the PG web site.
I'm sympathetic to this (obviously), though we need to recognize that not everyone who reads or creates our eBooks has the same political views. (The types of political statements MH has included in some newsletters resulted in some criticism on the -d list, which makes it clear that people interested in PG do not share the same views.)
Disney employs a few senators to "Shrink the Public Domain", we should at least leverage the popularity of PG to build up awareness in the population that "Public Domain" is not a thing that comes to you like the sunrise after a slept-thru night.
"Expanding the Public Domain" is a good slogan, but first you have to explain what "Public Domain" is, that it isn't about downloading freebies but about the people owning and using the literary works their culture is built upon.
This is certainly "on mission" for us. (The second paragraph... not the part about buying our own senators, which might be enjoyable but somewhat too expensive.)
What I really want to do is to put up a good paragraph on the main page (maybe a teaser on every page) and build a section about the cultural/educational/economical advantages of short copyright terms (and maybe some serious discussion about DRM / proprietary vs. open source / software patents etc.)
(A) Why not just link to our pals? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain (B) There are lots of places for discussion of public domain... Union for the Public Domain is one...Creative Commons another. I think that *hosting* such a discussion is something we'd do less well than other parties. I think hosting educational materials (content, versus discussion) worthwhile. (C) I see no reason why we can't remove or rotate out Free as in Beer immediately, rather than waiting for any of the above. -- Greg