Everyone cheer Stop43.org, EPUK, Pro-Imaging, AoP, Copyright Action, the authors of 21,000 letters and emails, and all who pitched in to support the movement to stop Clause 43, the “Orphan Works” clause, of the UK’s Digital Economy Bill.

One way to show your gratitude is to post a comment in this Mashable story. Mashable is one of the most highly visible sites on the WWW.

Although a great victory for content creators, and rightfully so, the protests are just beginning:

More on this, soon.

CLAUSE 43 CAN BE STOPPED!

Help our friends in the UK!

Clause 43 of the proposed Digital Economy Bill will wreck havoc on the livelihoods of many creative small businesses – illustrators, photographers, graphic artists, painters, etc. The movement to Stop 43 has gathered great strength, but time is short. Read about the campaign, post it to everyone you know, place their campaign badge on your site or on your signature. If this bill passes with Clause 43, you can bet it will encourage U.S. commercial sharks to take your work away from you.

What’s Yours in Now Ours

Until now, if someone found one of your photographs and wanted to use it commercially, they couldn’t without first asking you. Clause 43 changes all that by allowing the use of “Orphan Works” – photographs, illustrations and other artworks whose owners cannot be found.

Clause 43 says that if someone finds your photograph, wants to use it and decides that they can’t trace you, they can do whatever they like with it after paying an arbitrary fee to a UK Government-appointed “licensing body”. You’ll never know unless you happen to find it being used in this way, in which case you might be able to claim some money.

Go to Stop43.org find out how you can help!

We are using MySQL, help save it

Please copy and paste either the text and link above, or the button image and link, into your own blog and social networks.

Here’s a snip from the link, written by Michael “Monty” Widenius, the creator of MySQL. Please read the whole story on his blog (i.e., the link above):

“I have spent the last 27 years creating and working on MySQL and I hope, together with my team of MySQL core developers, to work on it for many more years.

“Oracle is trying to buy Sun, and since Sun bought MySQL last year, Oracle would then own MySQL. With your support, there is a good chance that the EC (from which Oracle needs approval) could prevent this from happening or demand Oracle to change the terms for MySQL or give other guarantees to the users. Without your support, it might not. The EC is our last big hope now because the US government approved the deal while Europe is still worried about the effects.

“Instead of just working out this with the EC and agree on appropriate remedies to correct the situation, Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal. According to what I been told, Oracle has promised to the customers, among other things, that “they will put more money into MySQL development than what Sun did” and that “if they would ever abandon MYSQL, a fork will appear and take care of things”.

“However just putting money into development is not proof that anything useful will ever be delivered or that MySQL will continue to be a competitive force in the market as it’s now.”

Please distribute widely. This could have big implications for the future of the WWW.

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UPDATE

Deadline extended to Tuesday, Sept. 8! Go to the Opt Out page now.

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Many authors seem confused about the ins and outs of the Google book settlement.

Read about what you need to know at Ask the Editor.

My advice would be to opt out – today! You don’t really lose anything and you keep control of your rights.