Our primary exempt purpose is to educate artists and the general public about the economic, artistic, and social harm caused by copyright monopolies, and to encourage and support the development of non-monopolistic, non-exclusive distribution methods.
The Sita Distribution Project is a transparent, real-world demonstration of how artists can flourish — economically and artistically — by letting their works circulate freely. It shows how giving the audience the freedom to share artists' work, and to organize activities (both commercial and non-commercial) around that work, ultimately benefits both artists and audiences more than exclusionary models do. The project's goal is a well-documented, repeatable model that can be used by independent artists everywhere. This project benefits our artist-in-residence, who has agreed to discuss the model publicly as part of the project.
Public communications programs: our officers, directors, and volunteers engage in frequent speaking appearances, panels, and interviews, to educate the public about the case for reframing copyright. In the past year, for example, our artist-in-residence has made more than twenty appearances at conferences, colleges and universities, and given even more interviews on the web, radio, and television; our pro bono legal counsel has been a guest lecturer to law students, offering critical legal and policy interpretations of copyright practices; and our president has given many talks and participated in panels and debates in different cities around the world, and given web, radio, and television interviews. We also publish articles and research on our web site, explicitly encouraging republication by others. As needed, our organization funds travel, transcription, Internet servers, and other expenses to make these appearances and publications possible.
The BookLiberator project is designed to distribute an affordable, easy-to-use device for converting physical books to digital format without harming the books. It combines innovative hardware design and open source software to digitize books at a rate of 600-900 pages per hour. The project's aims are to give people the convenience of having access to their libraries in digital form (e.g., searchability); of lawfully sharing copyrighted works within the boundaries permitted by "fair use" doctrine; and of unrestricted sharing of public domain works.
The BookLiberator project provides no services yet nor benefits any persons. Both the software and the device are in prototype stage, and the project's expenses in 2009 are all associated with designing a hardware device, researching and developing software, and setting up a manufacturing and order fulfillment process.