The wikipedia community has been asked to come up with ideas of what copyrighted items should be freed and made available to the general public. The wishlist is on a meta-wiki (meta-wikis assist the Wiki Foundation in coordinating wikis, such as wikipedia and wikimedia). Wikimedia has the copyright wishlist, which includes newspaper articles and photographs, 20th century sheet music, textbooks, and academic journals (including Web of Science, JSTOR). Here’s the wishlist for freeing up remote sensed images and vector files.
While perusing the list, I came across a term I’d never heard of before: abandonware. Someone suggested that the copyrights to discontinued software be purchased and distributed under a GPL.