Arun The simple solution lies in reducing the age of copyright for all literary works from the current 75 years or so to a more reasonable level of say less than 10 years. In case of India it is some X number of years after the death of the author! Even patents have maximum of 14 years for expiry date (Some countries, I think, have 17 years). OA champions should indeed focus on getting the law makers attention to the exceedingly long life for copyright. But any changes in the copyright law at global level is a bigger battle! Sathya ======= | N V Sathyanarayana | Managing Director | Informatics (India) Ltd | 194, R V Road, Basavanagudi | Bangalore 560 004. INDIA | http://www.informindia.co.in/ ww.informindia.co.in | Phone +91-80-4038-7777 | FAX +91-80-4038-7600 | _____ From: Subbiah Arunachalam [mailto:subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 5:08 AM To: sam.pitroda@c-sam.com; ratnakar@informindia.co.in; prgoswami@icssr.org; prgoswami@hotmail.com; seth@delhi.goethe.org; hkkaul@delnet.ren.nic.in; bgs@nic.in; chadha@nic.in; naina@nic.in; giridhar@chemeng.iisc.ernet.in Cc: rrrlf@wb.nic.in; library@rri.res.in; ard@drtc.isibang.ac.in; dasgupta_kalpana@hotmail.com; lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in; nandula.raghuram@gmail.com; ragh@ces.iisc.ernet.in; naglaxman@yahoo.com; satyanarayan@gmail.com; sathya@informindia.co.in; balki@serc.iisc.ernet.in; dbala@lvpei.org; mv@mbu.iisc.ernet.in; akolaskar@yahoo.com; bviswanathan@gmail.com Subject: Writings of great Indians on an open access portal Friends: In the US, the writings of the founding fathers of the country are being brought into the public domain. Should we not do the same in India for the writings of our great leaders (Gandhi, Nehru, Subash Chandra Bose, Patel, Rajaji, Tagore and a large number of others)? We can do the same for our great scientists (Srinivasa Ramanujan, J C Bose, S N Bose, M N Saha, K S Krishnan, H J Bhahba and a number of others; Almost all papers of C V Raman are already in the RRI archive). Best wishes. Arun == Plan <http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/05/plan-for-oa-to-american-foundi ng.html> for OA to American Founding Fathers' papers National http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2008/nr08-102.html Archives Creates Plan for Online Access to Founding Fathers Papers, press release, May 7, 2008. On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein submitted a report, entitled The Founders Online, to the Committees on Appropriations of the U.S. Congress. This report is the National Archives response to concerns raised by the Committees that the complete papers of America's Founding Fathers are not available online. The Founders Online is a plan for providing online access, within a reasonable timeframe, to researchers, students and the general public. The report is available http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/publications/founders-report.pdf electronically at the National Archives website. In announcing the completion of the report, Professor Weinstein said, "We feel this plan would provide scholars and the public access to the best available versions of the complete papers; it would also protect the longstanding interests of the publishers and host organizations which along with the Federal government have invested great resources in the past four decades. Most importantly, it would build a monument to the Founders of our nation in their own words." The National Archives received suggestions from the editors of the papers of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington, university publishers, and others in crafting a blueprint for providing access to the already completed print editions and the raw materials for the editions to come. If carried out, the plan ensures that interested readers worldwide can see the work in progress with the already complete editions accompanied by transcriptions of the papers yet to be published. To hasten the transition process, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission plans to invest $250,000 as a demonstration pilot project. The plan outlines three basic steps that remain: * Digitizing the existing 217 volumes and publishing the Papers on a single website to allow for research and inquiry across America's Founding Era collections; * Transcribing and otherwise preparing for publishing on the web the remaining papers (approximately 90,000 documents) and replacing these raw materials with authoritative annotated versions as these are completed; and * Creating an independent oversight process to ensure that rigorous performance goals are established and met by the parties carrying out all aspects of the work. <http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/05/plan-for-oa-to-american-foundi ng.html> Permanent link to this post Posted by Gavin Baker at 5/10/2008 05:33:00 PM. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.