Internal:Public Policy/Reports to the Wikimedia DC board

Three topics:

(1) Comments on Orphan Works -- The US Copyright Office invited our presence on a panel and written comments on the subject of "orphan works". These are works whose copyright-holder (usually the creator) cannot be identified or cannot be located, and therefore permission cannot be obtained to use the work, and it is therefore lost to Wikimedia Commons and many other uses. James Hare represented our chapter at the Copyright Office panel. The public policy committee has worked out about five pages of written comments, with contributions by all committee members and edited principally by John Sadowski.

We seem to have a consensus on the content. There are knotty details for the Copyright Office and legislators, but the interest of Wikimedians is fairly direct. Our examples may be useful to them. John has organized the text according to the issues the Copyright Office wanted us to address. The draft is here: http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Internal:Public_Policy_Committee_workspace/Orphan_works. We invite you to edit or comment. We would like board support or approval for this draft, and we will continue to make small changes. Comments must be in to the Copyright Office by April 14. We know of many Wikimedians and other experts to consult for verification, examples, and polish. For managing this, my preference is that John Sadowski continues to have editorial control and that the submission meets his standards.

(2) Congressional briefings -- Following last year's model, Jim Hayes will train us to meet with congressional staff to discuss public policy issues of interest to Wikimedians, such as copyright. Training's on Sat April 12. Details are on the chapter's wiki calendar. He will schedule meetings with staffers soon afterward. We ask members to help us identify congressional staff who might be helpful to meet with. They do not need to be bigshots. We are developing our capacity, here, and we are not taking firm positions on specific legislation. It may be helpful if the board can budget a bit for stationery, photocopies, and refreshments. It is possible that Jim and others will submit presentation about this effort at the WikiConference USA, and it is a fun subject for a blog post.

(3) Software patents -- The Supreme Court considers the Alice vs. CLS Bank software patents case on Monday March 31 at 10am. A couple of us will attend the arguments, and more are welcome. Logistical details will be on-wiki, linked from the calendar. We would make a larger event of this, but it requires getting up extremely early in the morning to wait in line, and missing half a work day, so interest has been subdued. Relatedly, coauthors and I plan to submit a presentation proposal for Wikimania 2014 offering "An update on software patents", covering this case (which will be decided in the summer, before the conference) and the spectrum points of view on software patents which are a subject of ongoing struggle internationally and affect the free knowledge movement. We have met with a number of experts on the subject.