[FM Discuss] wikimania presentation

[Andy Oram]

Adam, Ed, and I are all pretty close on ideas, and I'm sure Adam will find a way to fit in the important ideas in the few minutes he'll be given.

I'll just return to one point: whether the initial triad (author, publisher) should include "copyright" or something more general. I'd plead one more time for something more general, such as "distribution model." Reasons:

* Thousands of cranky open source advocates complain about copyright on blogs and other forums every day. I think the arguments are known, and your audience probably doesn't need much persuasion.

* The wider distribution model really IS interesting, and copyright is woven into it. Right now we're struggling at O'Reilly with how to take books out of print when we don't sell enough of them to make a reprint worthwhile. It's hard to take a book out of print! Just the "reversion of rights" to the author is a big headache that everybody strives to ignore as much as possible. It's the distribution model (along with copyright) that keeps us from letting a good Samaritan do a translation of a book, as FLOSS Manuals does all the time. And look at the region codes for DVDs.

* Working at a publisher, I feel a little more sympathy for the copyright model. It has adapted over time. Recently it's shot off trajectory into outer space with the Sonny Bono law, DRM, and RIAA lawsuits. For most of its history it was more of a good thing than a bad thing, I think. A doctrine supported (if I remember right) by Voltaire, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain can't be all bad.

Andy