<div class="gmail_quote"><b>Financial Chronicle : "Wikipedians say Indian govt should ease copyright curbs"</b><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/wikipedians-say-indian-govt-should-ease-copyright-curbs-992" target="_blank">http://www.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/wikipedians-say-indian-govt-should-ease-copyright-curbs-992</a>
</div><div><br></div><div><div><i>Wikipedia the online encyclopaedia is struggling to reproduce contents, which are freely available in government websites.</i></div><div><i><br></i></div><div><i>Wikipedians say government copyrighting its content has hampered its publication work in the world’s largest free online encyclopaedia. <b>Gautam John</b>, a Wikipedian who is former board member and secretary of Wikimedia India chapter, said, “There is a difference between contents of websites being publicly accessible and contents in public domain. In India, contents of government-funded websites are publicly accessible but they are restricted to be in public domain.”</i></div>
<div><i><br></i></div><div><i>Gautam added, “In US, government websites are not only in publicly accessible but are allowed to be in public domain that is reproduced and publicised”. He can’t understand rationale behind government copyrighting its websites contents, though it’s a practice inherited from colonial era.”</i></div>
<div><i><br></i></div><div><i>Wikipedians are asking for an open license for reproducing contents of government websites. Gautam, said, “Its the tax payers money which was used for generating such data. Data like census, healthcare, and others are neither sensitive nor related to national security.</i></div>
<div><i><br></i></div><div><i>Wikipedians have also abandoned their project to update profiles of six lakh Indian villages in Wikipedia. Wikipedia enables any person to contribute matters of his or her interest on it. <b>Tinu Cherian</b>, a Bangalore based Wikipedian and working in a MNC, had started the project, India Villages, last year. Tinu, said, "I completed about 1200 villages of Karnataka and 1200 villages of Kerala. But for the time being I have stopped the wok.” </i></div>
</div><div><i><br></i></div><div><br></div><div><div><div>Regards</div><div>Tinu Cherian</div><div><a href="mailto:press@wikimedia.in">press@wikimedia.in</a></div><div><a href="http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news">http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news</a></div>
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