The article mostly covers the relevant law and how the copyright ownership has evolved.
I kept thinking about what we could do now. I doubt the copyright owner thinks about copyright laws like we do -- freedom, culture evolving, etc. Other posts on this thread say "Martin Luther King's descendants ... are disgracing the man's heritage," they probably don't know our perspective. They haven't read The Right to Read -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. They probably intend to keep others from messing it up.
Instead of insulting them, we might try to educate them on our perspective and see if they might be persuaded to release it under the GPL or something similar. If Sony has it, they may be unwilling to change, but maybe the family?
If an inflexible conglomerate already has it, what can we learn from them about getting the owners of rights to culturally important copyrighted works first? There are more of us. Why did they get there first? How can we do better next time?
I want copyright law changed, but in the meantime, this work and many like it could be GPL'ed. Why don't we make that happen?
I kept thinking about what we could do now. I doubt the copyright owner thinks about copyright laws like we do -- freedom, culture evolving, etc. Other posts on this thread say "Martin Luther King's descendants ... are disgracing the man's heritage," they probably don't know our perspective. They haven't read The Right to Read -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. They probably intend to keep others from messing it up.
Instead of insulting them, we might try to educate them on our perspective and see if they might be persuaded to release it under the GPL or something similar. If Sony has it, they may be unwilling to change, but maybe the family?
If an inflexible conglomerate already has it, what can we learn from them about getting the owners of rights to culturally important copyrighted works first? There are more of us. Why did they get there first? How can we do better next time?
I want copyright law changed, but in the meantime, this work and many like it could be GPL'ed. Why don't we make that happen?