April 26, 2008 is World IP day. Some lay people are still unaware of the term "Intellectual Property" (IP) which refers to the fact that non-tangible things, like music, inventions and ideas, can be legally protected. My colleague Luc Devroye has a provocative piece on his web site about Intellectual Property, and why the implementation is today's society seems to diverge significantly from the principles or ideals that justify it. Luc is a brilliant and very famous academic whose diverse contributions includes fundamental work on probability theory. (He's also got a lot of zest for life, and is thus a lot of fun to be around.)
See the page regarding RIP day
One disturbing aspect of the IP landscape today is that many governments have become members of WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization), and WIPO is fairly aggressive about pushing a very protective IP policy. One of the WIPO statues is that members countries give WIPO ... "such legal capacity as may be necessary for the fulfilment of the Organization's objectives and for the exercise of its functions" [wipo convention].
WIPO has declared World IP Day on April 26. WIPO will focus on "celebrating innovation and promoting respect for intellectual property". It's would be a good day to put something, a song, a photo, or a computer program into the public domain. You can also consider using a Creative Commons license which assures you of still getting some credit, it that matters (by just saying that on the work you release).
Links:
Intellectual Property definition at Wikipedia.
WIPO.
Free Cultural Works
Attribution License
