You Are the Copyfree Initiative
The people who believe in the importance of copyfree policy, who release their works under copyfree licenses, and who tell others about the reasons a copyfree policy is important make up the body of the Copyfree Initiative. Additional help comes in the form of organized advocacy efforts and contributions to copyfree licensed and allied projects that need the help. There is always more that can be done, however.
At present, the Copyfree Initiative is a labor of love for its founder and its community. It is not a registered non-profit organization, and it is not a business. It represents an investment of time and money, but it is an investment gladly made in pursuit of important goals.
If you want to contribute to the cause, apart from the opportunities suggested in the Support subsections, a few basic categories of help are welcome:
Financial Gifts
If you wish to help financially, you can use one of the methods here or go to the community page to choose a way to get in touch with the founder to discuss how you can help out.
Donation Methods:
Independent Efforts
Additional advocacy activities are possible, separate from the Copyfree Initiative organization itself, of course. If you wish to coordinate such efforts with the Copyfree Initiative so that we can help each other, discuss ideas, and get input that can help develop the most effective independent effort possible, please get in touch via the community resources maintained by the Copyfree Initiative. See the advocacy and projects pages for some ideas on what you can do on your own.
Legal and Financial Expertise
Lawyers (and other legal professionals) with knowledge of copyright law can be of considerable value for very little of their time as occasional advisers, and for assessing the likely legal implications of various licenses. At this time, a modest budget exists for the purpose of compensating legal professionals for their time in specific areas, but finding a qualified and willing lawyer is proving more difficult than expected.
Accountants and tax lawyers would be of benefit in improving organizational status of the Copyfree Initiative, though such benefit is likely to require more time and effort.
If you have such expertise and can spare a little time, please get in touch.
Organizational Participation
We maintain a fairly casual organization so far. People who have gotten most involved have done so primarily by getting to know the community and, over time, helping each other out with copyfree related projects. Areas of personal expertise (or at least a willingness to learn and time to contribute) come to light, leading to volunteers becoming involved to the extent that they are de facto officers of the Copyfree Initiative. From there it is only a small step to making it official.
Wanted: Linkrot Scout
At present, the Copyfree Initiative is looking for someone to fill a role that might serve as a good introductory volunteer/member job -- a linkrot scout. Over time, links to outside resources (or, worse, to other parts of the Copyfree Initiative website) may lose their relevance as changes are made to a site or websites come and go, a phenomenon sometimes called "linkrot". A linkrot scout is someone who regularly checks on the links within a website to ensure that:
- The link is not broken.
- The resource at the other end of the link is still relevant and useful.
Rotting links should be reported to the copyfreesite project issue tracker so that they can be fixed or removed. While anyone who notices a problem with a link on the site is encouraged to report problems, having someone officially tasked with the job of regularly checking links to ensure they are still "fresh" can be of great benefit to the project. If you are interested in taking on this job, please contact us and let us know. If you have questions, you may also inquire on the mailing list or in an official IRC channel; information about both can be found on the community page.
Updates
Help collecting news items and resources related to copyfree policy and similar subjects would be greatly appreciated. Joining the IRC channels or sending information about such news items and resources to the mailing list, all of which are identified on the community page, is probably the easiest way to ensure that people who can make use of such updates will see them. If you post news items or thoughts related to copyfree policy to a Twitter account, marking them @CopyfreeNews should also bring them to the attention of the Copyfree Initiative founder, who maintains that resource as time allows.
Other
Efforts are underway or planned for the future to create the infrastructure for additional ways people can help out, such as contributing back-end code or content for the copyfree.org site itself and organizing outreach events and advocacy campaigns. If you have additional ideas for what can be done to improve on the state of the Copyfree Initiative and support copyfree policy, including ideas for additional ways volunteers and supporters can contribute, please get in touch.