[Community] Creative Commons Italia: Scarichiamoli

[Creative Commons Italia]

To: Pierre Levy, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman, Pekka Himanen

Dear Pierre, Lawrence, Richard and Pekka

Here at Creative Commons Italia we are following up on the request we 
received on December 16th 2004, when right after the official launch of the 
Italian Creative Commons licenses a political representative suggested CC 
Italia to help draft a new law that would reflect the spirit and nature of 
the public domain through the opening of the licenses of publicly funded 
work. 

"Scarichiamoli" initiative can be defined in a few simple words:
Everything that has been created with public funds and/or public financial 
support should be placed under the public domain, and made easily and openly 
accessible to everyone (wherever. possible "downloadable"). 

The Internet, due to its nature, is a powerful media on which communities 
and citizens can coordinate themselves and transform their personal 
initiative in social, political, economic action. 
Politicians are responsible to listening and transforming those instances in 
real, tangible solutions.
We are very pragmatical about this: we have an initiative and we want our 
politicians to do their job: listen to us.
As initiatives like this will be more frequent in the near future, this is 
not a simple "online petition", this is not a simple "civil protest": we 
want to reach directly institutions and get them to look at this issue in 
the face. 

In this direction, the exclusive rights relative to intellectual work should 
expire the moment in whicht he work is reproduced/replicated thanks to 
public financial support.
To evaluate if the work reproduced thanks to public financing can be 
utilized, it is possible to adopt the "conditio sine qua non" 
criterion:intellectual work can be reproduced/replicated if the work could 
have not been created without that public financing.
For example: if the state finances the production of a film, that film 
should remain under the public domain.
If the state pays an author to create music, the musician should not be able 
to claim royalties on the execution of that song. 

To share our knowledge freely: this is what we are asking and this is what 
communities and citizens want as well. 
It's people's will.
Vox populi, Vox Dei (the voice of the people, the voice of God); what people 
want in this respect is more than legitimate: it needs only to be approved 
and formalized by the State.
There are also many ways and media through which this can be achieved: from 
the Internet to digital TV.
So what we are seeking is not just an upgrade to the European Copyright law 
(related rights and patrimonial rights should be declined by authors when 
they receive public financial support) but we also demand the creation of a 
publicly accessible web portal through which music, art, cultural artifacts 
and products of "our" knowledge can be made accessible under a public domain 
license.
This shall be a public clearinghouse entitled: "Scarichiamoli" 
("Scarichiamoli" stands for "download them" but also means "discard 
them"...you can guess who is going to be discarded...) and to achieve this 
we invite the State to proactively engage and interact with universities, 
foundations, associations. 

We strongly believe that public domain means nothing without having true and 
effective public access.
If you share the goal of our initiative, please endorse us, we will be happy 
to honor your support with a written mention.
And if you want we will be happy to have you collaborate with us. 

For further information please visit
http://www.creativecommons.it/main.php?page=scarichiamoli 

Best
The "Commoners" of Creative Commons Italia
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