[Fwd: [pdb-discuss] Re: Writing a grant proposal for the public domain works db v0.4]

Tue Jun 27 20:51:06 UTC 2006

I'd like to send off the proposal to Vera at OSI so just wanted to check 
everyone was happy. If I don't hear any objections in next 24hrs or so 
I'll take it that is ok for me to send if off as is.

Regards,

Rufus

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [pdb-discuss] Re: Writing a grant proposal for the public 
domain	works db v0.4
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:23:03 +0100
From: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
To: Tim Cowlishaw <timcowlishaw at gmail.com>
CC: pdb-discuss at lists.okfn.org
References: <448FCAB6.5060502 at okfn.org>	 
<3c92682c0606140208w78a02fe7s674e8e78c99cffb8 at mail.gmail.com>	 
<4491521B.6030708 at okfn.org>	 
<5EF1DC40-0CF7-494B-9278-A02B1C1E07AA at gmail.com>	 
<4497FBD9.4000605 at okfn.org> 
<3c92682c0606220901k44c70102ie893414d619ff9c2 at mail.gmail.com>

To save Tim yet another another round of folding in suggested changes
I've produced the a merged myself which you can see below. This should
be pretty close to final. Main changes are:

1. After talking with Tom I've put this as a joint project of Free
Culture UK and the Open Knowledge Foundation: "Free Culture UK in
association with the Open Knowledge Foundation plan to build ...".

2. Removed mention of specific license (GNU GPL) as we may not use that
license (e.g. we might want to use BSD for code and CC by-sa for data)

3. refactored 2nd and 3rd section: Got rid of proposal section and
created 'Public Domain or Not? A Complex Question'

Hope these are all ok.

Regards,

Rufus

= Public Domain Works Database =

== Introduction ==

The existence of an accessible public domain of cultural works is
essential to the business of educators, academics, artists and critics
alike. Originally, in order to benefit from copyright protection for a
work, authors were required to register the work and deposit a copy at a
central registry. This ensured that the identity of the work's author
could always be known, and that both copyright and public domain works
could be easily identified.

Today it is no longer necessary to do this. Any work eligible for
protection is covered from the time of the making or publication of the
work, without any need to register that work as being protected, or to
mark it as such. As a result, the process of identifying protected or
public domain works is no longer trivial, as there is no central
registry for copyrighted works, determining whether or not a work is
still covered can rely on guesswork, or substantial (and costly)
investigation. This is an unsatisfactory situation, as the prohibitive
cost and time commitment involved in ascertaining whether a work is or
is not in the public domain stifles creativity that could otherwise
profit from the existence of public domain works.

== Public Domain or Not? A Complex Question ==

In order to determine whether a work is public domain several facts
about it need to be ascertained: the date the work was first published,
the name(s) of any contributing authors, and the dates of the death of
these authors, if they are deceased.

In addition, it is important, particularly in the case of sound
recordings, to ascertain the same information about copyrights that the
work in question may derive from.  For example, in order to determine
the Copyright status of a sound recording we would need to know:

   * The year in which the recording was first made
   * The name of the composer of the underlying musical work
   * The date of death of the composer, if he or she is deceased.

For example, in the case of Elvis Presley's 'That's Alright', we would
ascertain that as the recording was made in 1955 and the term of
copyright on sound recordings currently stands at 50 years, that the
recording passed into the public domain in 2005. However, as the song
itself (the 'underlying musical work') was composed by Billy Crudup (who
died in 1974), and is covered by a standard term of life plus 70 years,
it will enter the public domain in 2044.

As the reader can imagine, for recordings of songs with multiple
composers, or recordings incorporating a number of musical works, this
calculation is complicated even further.

== A Public Domain Registry for the EU ==

In order to combat this problem and ease the difficulties involved in
ascertaining whether a work is in the public domain, Free Culture UK in
association with the Open Knowledge Foundation plan to build a *Public
Domain Registry* which will list cultural works that have entered the
public domain or which are about to fall out of copyright.

The project will initially focusing on sound recordings because of the
current debate in the EU about the extension of the term of copyright
for works. Such an extension, (particularly when applied retroactively,
as in this case) would significantly reduce the size of the public
domain but in the absence of a Registry of the type we are proposing,
this loss cannot be accurately quantified.

This registry will take the form of a wiki-like database and associated
web application storing the above details for as many cultural artefacts
as possible. With this data stored, it would then be possible to
determine programmatically or by hand which works are currently in the
Public Domain. A major aim of the project is to harness community and
volunteer involvement in the process of finding and entering information
as well as in determination of the copyright status of the work and so
the system will be designed to allow decentralized collaborative
contributions in a wiki-like way.

We are seeking funding in order to develop this Public Domain Registry.
The funding will be used to develop a software system and associated
database structure for the registry, and will also cover the collection
and entry of a limited amount of data for testing and demonstration
purposes. Once there is a functioning web application the further
acquisition and entry of data will be performed by the community.

Both the software and data produced would be 'open' so that other
projects, for example those working on orphan works, could easily use
and build upon our work.

Tim Cowlishaw wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Version 3 of the proposal, you all know the drill by now. Annotate away!
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Tim
> 
[snip]

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