What a nonsense issue. This superfluous discussion is fueled by two
fallacies, the confusion of copyright and trademarking and an
unhealthy paranoia toward the foundation. Protection of logos
associated with the wikimedia community is a good thing. The
foundation is an asset to the community! They can offer legal support
in cases of abuse of wikimedia related symbology. It is absurd to
create a spectre of a community-suing evil foundation while at the
same tie ignoring the very real threat of dilution and abuse of
wikimedia symbols and resulting damage of wikimedia community
reputation by spam, phishing, link farming etc. sites.
Sorry, but this is alarmist hippie crap and typical "netizen-outrage".
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 7:20 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
<nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
-------- Messaggio originale --------
Oggetto: [Wikimedia-l] Free as in Wikimedia Foundation
Data: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 13:12:04 +0100
Mittente: Tomasz W. Kozłowski
A: Wikimedia Mailing List
Hi community,
I would like to bring to your attention a matter that's currently
being discussed on Meta, one that has not yet gained too much interest
(though it was discussed during IRC office hours, and was mentioned on
one mailing list, as far as I see).
It seems that the Wikimedia Foundation registered a community logo
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg> as
a trademark in the United States, with the international application
still pending.
The logo was originally created in 2006 by User:WarX (Artur
Fijałkowski) , and was adopted as the logo of Meta-Wiki in 2008 — and
as far as I can recall, the very point of it being created was to (1)
have a community logo released into the public domain and (2) to have
a community logo which was /not a trademark/.
I am especially worried about the WMF not informing the community
about their trademark registration — we have only found out about it
via an edit on Commons
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=84864201&oldid=49625546>,
and then after asking about it during IRC office hours at the end of
January.
As far as I understand, the WMF has not discussed trademark
registration with the author of the logo
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=92395329&oldid=92392542>
— though obviously, since Artur-WarX released it into the public
domain, it would've only be good manners, and not a legal requirement.
The discussion is taking place on Meta at
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo>, and all
comments are welcome.
--
Tomasz W. Kozłowski
a.k.a. [[user:odder]]
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