Kul Wadhwa wrote:
> Microsoft with other partners has also been working on bringing broadband
> to Kenya (and ultimately other African countries) via white spaces....
> However, every party has their own agenda so hopefully competition lowers
> prices and gives people more choices. And having many entities working to
> get people internet access (esp those that really need it) is what we need
> to see more of...
...The FCC has been performing successful IEEE 802.16 WiMAX/MeFi
whitespaces tests in at least three metropolitan areas since 2006. However,
these pilots are actively opposed by carriers who lobby the FCC, states and
municipalities, the FTC, and even hardware manufactures trying to stave off
adoption because as soon as the correct approvals get rubber stamped,
municipalities will be able to offer telephony services in competition with
the mobile carriers.
Would someone please create an advocacy RFC about this?
Hi everyone,
WIPO is currently negotiating a treaty to introduce a new
limitation/exception to copyright. The German ministry of justice is
keeping us posted with the current wording of the (still not
finalized) treaty.
Wikimedia Deutschland has not been participating in any efforts on
this matter. We indicated to the ministry early on that we believe
every person should be allowed to transform a published work to make
it fit his or her current needs and that such copyright
limitation/exception should not be restricted to visually impaired
persons.
Mathias
--
Mathias Schindler
Projektmanager
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
web: http://www.wikimedia.de
mail: mathias.schindler(a)wikimedia.de
Ceterum censeo opera officiales esse liberandam -
http://urheberrecht.wikimedia.de/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/681/51985.
Hello all,
You may be interested to see that Google's motion for summary judgement was
granted in the Viacom case. The decision is attached, and see below for a
description:
Google again beats Viacom in YouTube copyright case
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/entertainment-us-google-viacom-id…
By Jonathan Stempel
Thu Apr 18, 2013 6:11pm EDT
(Reuters) - A federal judge has thrown out Viacom Inc's lawsuit accusing
Google Inc of posting its programs on YouTube without permission, a year
after a federal appeals court had revived the landmark copyright
infringement case.
For the second time in three years, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in
Manhattan rejected Viacom's damages claims over Google's alleged
unauthorized posting of clips from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,"
"South Park," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and other programs that viewers had
uploaded to YouTube.
…
--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia
Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer
for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal
capacity.*
Just cross-posting, this might be an interesting discussion for some of
you. :)
Cheers from Milano,
Nicole Ebber
International Affairs
http://wikimedia.de
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Fae" <faewik(a)gmail.com>
Date: 19 Apr 2013 17:37
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Question: How do we define lobbying?
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Wikimedia
Chapters general discussions" <chapters(a)wikimedia.ch>
Cc:
In a workshop in the Milan conference, there was a break-out
discussion led by Iolanda (WMIT) on lobbying. There is a lot of
interest in finding ways of supporting change in copyright legislation
and open knowledge access in as many countries as possible.
One of the interesting features of the WMF agreement when providing
funds under the FDC process is that this money should not be used for
lobbying. During the coffee break I had a quick chat with Garfield
(the WMF CFO) about a possible clarification. My understanding from
that chat was that if there were valid reasons for lobbying in support
of our cause, this should be a separate grant for traceability
reasons, it is not intended to imply a blanket ban, but traceability
is needed to satisfy the IRS. If a chapter has separate income from
the WMF, then there is no concern as this is a matter for the
individual chapter board and membership to worry about.
I think this is a useful clarification, and this ought to be followed
up as an action from our workshop.
I would welcome any comments from the wider community on what sorts of
lobbying as a movement that we definitely want to support, encourage
and possibly provide funds for, and if we could come to a clearer
definition of what lobbying is (such as political protest) and things
we do as a community that is not quite lobbying, even though it may
relate to government legislation (such as publishing a white paper
with our summary of the benefits of changes in copyright law).
Cheers,
Fae
--
faewik(a)gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
James Heilman wrote:
>
>... Anyway who would base an expert system for medicine on
> Wikipedia would be a fool. I am sure the people at IBM are not.
The problem that concerns me isn't the quality of Wikipedia's medical
content, which I am sure is proofread with a nanoscale-thin comb before
it gets near Watson, but the quality of tangentially related concepts.
The examples I'd like to try to work with Watsoners at Rutgers etc. on
are: saturation of medical-related concepts into articles with less quality,
(e.g. the use of medical terms in articles about fiction, religion, disputes,
disasters, economics, etc.) inference paths which involve controversial
assumptions not subject to the usual rigor (e.g., cost savings from
preventative care, proportionality of effort to harm, harm reduction, etc.)
idioms, figures of speech, sarcastic quotations, etc.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/01/ibms_jeopardy-winning_supercom.htmlhttp://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2013/01/31/ibm-to-provide-rensselaer-polyt…
Who is our Campus Ambassador(s) to Rutgers, and do they want to try
to enroll Watson as an editor?
Sincerely,
James Salsman
Hello all,
For your information, here are news stories about blocked access to Russian
Wikipedia. If you are following any discussions in the RU Wikipedia
community, I am interested to hear more.
--
Russia May Block Wikipedia Access Over Narcotics Article
RIA Novosti.
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130405/180469665.html
20:09 05/04/2013
MOSCOW, April 5 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian-language division of Wikipedia,
the world’s largest free online encyclopedia, has received notification
from the state media and communications watchdog Roskomnadzor that part of
its content has been included on an Internet blacklist.
The notification says that a Wikipedia article titled “Smoking Cannabis”
includes information on the methods of extraction, production and
consumption of narcotics.
The site’s administrators must remove all banned content within 24 hours of
receiving the notification, otherwise the hosting provider is obliged to
block access to Russian-language Wikipedia in Russia. If the provider fails
to do this, the network operator will block access to the website, the
notification said.
Internet censorship became a topic of heated online debate in Russia after
a new law came into force last year allowing extrajudicial blacklisting of
web content deemed to be promoting suicide, pedophilia or drug use.
Last July, the Russian-language division of Wikipedia temporarily suspended
its work in protest against this law, which was at that time a bill
proposing a unified digital blacklist of all websites containing banned
content.
English-language Wikipedia went offline for 24 hours in a similar protest
on January 18 in a protest against U.S. anti-piracy legislation that
critics say could lead to censorship. As a result of "blackout" protests on
thousands of internet sites, the U.S. Congress postponed the vote on two
controversial bills until issues raised about them can be resolved.
Russian media regulator confirms Wikipedia blacklisted
Russia Beyond the Headlines
http://rbth.ru/news/2013/04/05/russian_media_regulator_confirms_wikipedia_b…
18:50 April 5, 2013 Interfax
Russia's telecommunications and media sector regulator has confirmed that
it has Wikipedia on its blacklist of websites.
"It has been on the register [of sites with banned information] for a long
time. I don't know why it's only now that they've woken up," Vladimir
Pikov, spokesman for the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of
Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Mass Communications
(Roskomnadzor), told Interfax.
However, "we are interested in cooperation, and we have made this clear
more than once," he said.
Earlier, the Twitter microblog of Wikipedia's Russian version carried the
tweet: "It's happened finally - we've been put on the black list (twice?)
for the article 'Cannabis smoking."
--
Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*For legal reasons, I may only serve as an attorney for the Wikimedia
Foundation. This means I may not give legal advice to or serve as a lawyer
for community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal
capacity.*