From: Matt McKay <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2017 08:40:59 -0600 As it is pertinent to the points made here, and on your blog (http://onsnetwork.org/chartgerink/2017/01/13/false-claims-of-copyright-and-stm/) I am posting STM’s response to your letter regarding copyright: Thank you for contacting STM about the use of copyright by our member organisations. If copyright has been incorrectly or inadvertently claimed, we are confident the matter will be addressed in due course. In the more general case, STM and its members believe that copyright promotes the creation and dissemination of works and enables the development of new services and innovations. We support a free public domain and object, for instance, to “public domaine payant”, a system some countries impose in relation to public domain works. One of the chief merits of public domain is that such works may be re-used freely to create new works that are based on them, but public domain does not, of itself, promote dissemination of public domain works or ensure their continued and unaltered availability. If an organisation expends time, money, and other resources to make, curate and keep a work in the public domain reliably and widely available, then such organisation should be able to recover the value of the service they provide. We note, for example, that entry into museums hosting public domain works are not generally free, nor are reproductions of very well known or famous public domain works such as the Mona Lisa. Reasonable people can, and do, differ in their opinions about appropriate prices for goods and services and such differences are likely to persist. As you may be aware, for competition reasons, STM cannot comment on specific prices within the industry.