Category: event

During today’s press conference, the Ministry of Administration and Digitization has announced its works on the Bill on Openness of Public Resources.

The press materials read: „Opening of public resources means public institutions making the collections of books, science articles, databases, photographs, works of art, film and music recordings that they have gathered available to the public. The Internet creates unique opportunities to make this knowledge widely accessible so that public resources are available to anyone who is interested in using them the same way they now use Wikipedia”. We are pleased to see this way of comprehending the issue of openness. It is significantly different from the stance presented recently by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The contents of Wikipedia articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike free license. I think that it would be excellent for the development of culture in Poland if materials made available by public institutions as part of the law on public resources opening were published under a similar free license, especially that the Ministry of Administration and Digitization has promised 10 billion PLN to fund the opening of the resources. The Modern Poland Foundation is pleased that Wolne Lektury has been listed among the examples of open resources. A month-long public consultation is to commence next week.

translation: Monika Szewczyk

On September 26, a CopyCamp conference will be held by the Modern Poland Foundation. It will take place in a Warsaw cinema of a great tradition: Kultura. The meeting will be fully devoted to the issues relating to the copyright law. For the first time, the representatives of (sometimes extremely) diverse views on the availability of cultural goods and active participation in culture will meet in such a wide circle. The aim of the event is to enable them to enter into a dialogue.

Our special guest will be Nina Paley, a famous American cartoonist and activist belonging to the free culture movement. Among guests who have confirmed their participation are: Paweł Zalewski, Hirek Wrona, Lidia Geringer de Oedenberg, Artur Kurasiński, Krzysztof Lewandowski, Radek Czajka – please see more details on the conference website.

Thanks to an invaluable help from Internet users who responded to our recent appeal, we managed (just before the time limit set by the Court) to find the nephews and nieces of Janina Gołębiewska: Zofia Poniatowska, Jadwiga Majdaniuk and Stefan Gołębiewski.

According the data gathered, the presumptive heirs of Janina Gołębiewska died in the 1990s, which will be shortly confirmed on the basis of their death certificates provided by the Registry Offices in Lublin and Łódź. We also try to find out whether Mrs Gołębiewska drew up a will or had descendants. Thus, we will be grateful for any information which may shed new light on this issue (fundacja@nowoczesnapolska.org.pl). In the meantime, we are looking forward to the Court’s decision concerning further proceedings.

Our sincere thanks go to those who support us in our struggles to release the legacy of Janusz Korczak.

On August 28, 2012 another trial to determine the death date of Janusz Korczak took place in the District Court in Lublin. The Court adjourned the case till October 11 due to the appointment of the Minister of the State Treasury.

In order that the works of Janusz Korczak should enter the public domain on January 1, 2013, it is necessary to confirm his death in 1942 by the court of law. This date prevails in historiography, yet the year assumed in official documents is 1946. The Warsaw monuments mention 1942 as the time of Korczak’s death.

Photo: Paweł Stankiewicz, licencja CC-BY 2.0