Greg Newby wrote:
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.)
Because they were totally unrelated to PG, like wearing headscarves. I don't think anybody that works for PG advocates longer copyright terms or stricter DRM. The mission of PG is to make more ebooks available, shortening copyright terms is an ideal way to achieve that.
(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.
Wikipedia is NPOV. We should advocate shorter copyright terms.
(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.
I'm writing up a new page about "free" right now. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org