Dear fellow Wikimedians, Dear all,
Here is a quick report of Wikimédia France activities for the previous months which may interest you. We worked for #ConnaissanceLibre2017 (FreeKnowledge2017 {{en}}) and the main event of this public advocacy campaign: an exhibition held from the 17th to 19th of March in a pop-up store in Paris.
The exhibition was designed to increase the public awareness about the lack of a commercial Freedom of Panorama in France, the new French law about national domains (harmful because even if they're in the public domain we will need permission to take photos of those historic buildings) and copyfrauds or public domain violation done by some cultural institutions or companies. So, some artworks were showed, related to these different problems. Some goodies, still related to these artworks, were sold in order to have commercial transactions... All expenses were paid personally, this was aimed to have an event organized by individual peoples and not by the supporting organizations. Legally important in case of prosecutions. We still need to have a meeting for debriefing, but this event was a big success. More than one hundred people came for the kick-off and we had press coverages. A lot of people were from our ecosystem but some of them were not and they were not aware of the topics presented, so it was great for awareness raising. Now, a city and some local groups are asking to rent the exhibition!
This exhibition is a part of a larger campaign https://connaissancelibre2017.fr/, as we're calling on the candidates of the French presidential election to answer some questions about Knowledge commons. So far, 1 has replied and 2 more said they will.
We (ConnaissanceLibre2017 group) had/have the support or endorsement of several non-profit organizations or unformal groups from the Commons & free/open movements, such as: OpenStreetMap, SavoirsCom1, APRIL, Adullact, Mozilla, La Paillasse, VECAM, Creative Commons, Framasoft, Paleo-energetique and for sure Wikimedia France.
And now? The campaign is keeping on, we're still in touch with the political parties and we're waiting for other replies. We're working on legal recourses against the decree of national domains, and we have a bunch of hearings about open content and open culture in various Ministries or Councils/commitee. In the coming months we plan to work closely with Dimitar to help him as far as we can on the European level. And we plan to maintain the good dynamics with other NPOs or stakeholders from the free/commons movement to keep this bigger impact we have together.
I really don't know if you're interested by this kind of report, let me know. As you may know, if you have any questions, I'm still available here or in private message :)
Best regards, -- Emeric Vallespi Chairman
Mobile +33 6 61 15 13 12 <+33%206%2061%2015%2013%2012> Twitter @evallespi https://twitter.com/evallespi
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