On 18 Des, 22:38, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED] cybersource.com.au> wrote: > > I dare say that European countries which have had automatic copyright > longer than the US have seen far more of their national heritage (early > film, photographs and the like) rot away.
Indeed. One of the most famous and ridiculous cases is that of the Domesday Project: a nationwide survey of Britain in the spirit of the Domesday Book (which was 900 years old at the time of the endeavour), where the newly gathered, late twentieth century information was in danger of becoming unrecoverable due to the scarcity of parts for, and knowledge about, the technology employed (now just over 20 years old). This site provides an overview of the recovery process and information about the history of the project: http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/domesday/domesday.html Although other technical discussions and perspectives have been published about the project [1,2], the most pertinent issue to this particular discussion is mentioned here: "Many different copyright owners contributed a range of different types of data to the Domesday Project for inclusion on the discs. Unfortunately it is unclear as to exactly who contributed and under what circumstances the data in question can be used." http://www.si.umich.edu/CAMILEON/domesday/ipr.html In many ways, those acting to preserve the contents of the Domesday Project were able to act with some pretty large organisations watching their backs. Others may not be as fortunate, as was pointed out. Paul P.S. Steven's post is indeed highly informative reading for those willing to consider more thoroughly the nature and impact of copyright. [1] http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html [2] http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/tna/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list