EFF coordinated a six day copyright week, with suggested readings and actions in support of six principles, below with readings + actions count:

• Transparency: 10 + 1 = 11
• Building and Defending a Robust Public Domain: 16 + 0 = 16
• Open Access: 9 + 2 = 11
• You Bought it, You Own It: 8 + 3 = 11
• Fair Use Rights: 14 + 1 = 15
• Getting Copyright Right: 7 + 1 = 8

I couldn’t help but notice that the public domain “wins” by the metric of total readings + actions, perhaps indicative of relative enthusiasm and evaluation of importance by the communities EFF reaches. Good.

The apparent “loser” is getting copyright right, which I’ll also take undue satisfaction in: it’s an impoverished objective, relative to expanding and protecting intellectual freedom. Alternatively, public domain maximalism (second alternative, corresponding to the runner-up: fair use maximalism) is getting copyright right. But I acknowledge advocating “getting copyright right” (and the entire exercise of copyright week) is a fine thing to do given constraints, and its “loss” is likely due to being a more difficult writing assignment, and falling on the last day.

The latent “loser” though is the role of commons initiatives in changing the knowledge economy, thus the range of policies which can be imagined, and the resources available to support various policies. Some initiatives are mentioned, but almost exclusively as victims of costs imposed by bad policy. Daniel Mietchen’s Wikimedia and Open Access might be the reading closest to what I’d like to see a whole day dedicated to (on the seventh day of copyright week, commoners made their own freedom). Though starting with copyright-imposed costs to the project, Mietchen proceeds to describe collaboration among Wikimedians and the Open Access movement, and ends with (implied) competition:

wider exposure of Open Access materials through Wikimedia platforms may perhaps serve as an incentive for researchers to reconsider whether putting their articles behind access and reuse barriers is an appropriate approach to publishing them.

Related, because it is the domain of the most robust commons initiatives, it is too bad software was not the primary topic of several copyright week readings and actions. But even ignoring the seventh day angle, it is incredibly short-sighted to treat software as a separate category, whether for purposes of study or policy (e.g., copyright). All of the traditional subjects of copyright are now largely made with and mediated by software, but that’s just the beginning. Soon enough, they’ll all be software, or be obsolete. (In hindsight I should have noticed copyright week approaching, and urged various free/open source software initiatives to participate, and explain their policy relevance and potency.)

Back to cheering, I highly recommend at least skimming a few of the readings in each category, linked on the EFF copyright week page. Unless you follow knowledge policy writ large really closely, you’re almost certain to learn something new about policy battles that will play a large role in shaping the future of society.

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To make up for the lack of copyright week “actions” recommended for building and defending a robust public domain: sign the public domain manifesto, upgrade your work to the public domain, and enjoy and share the greatest public domain film to date.