[pdb-discuss] Yikes - introduction page

Fri Feb 16 11:56:40 UTC 2007

Hello,

The new site is looking really nice, but I'm worried about a paragraph in the introduction page:

"Redefining the Public Domain
Traditionally the public domain was defined as all intellectual works that could be copied, used and reused freely without legal restriction. In line with contemporary academia, we subscribe to an expanded notion which instead equates the public domain with ‘open’ knowledge, that is, all ideas and information that can be freely used, redistributed and reused. The notion of ‘free’ in this context should be loosely interpreted to include, for example, licence terms that require derivative works (e.g. Mash-ups) must themselves be published under ‘open’ terms."
http://blog.publicdomainworks.net/?page_id=8

That argument has its place (Benkler has given a similar argument a big boost, Pam Samuelson suggested it is a sensible default in general public discourse) but I don't think that place is on the PDW web site. PDW is, so far as I understand, just for works in the legal/constitutional public domain, i.e. works out of copyright. Unless PDW also intends to host a wide variety of copyleft/CC works then I suggest we stick to explaining that we mean the legal public domain, and perhaps have a footnote explaining that visitors might be interested in a wider discussion about the term, maybe linking to Samuelson's excellent paper on the subject?
http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/enriching%20discourse%20on%20public%20domains.pdf

Regards,
Tom