Hello everyone,
As you’ve likely heard, four language Wikipedias will black out tomorrow, March 21, in opposition to the current version of the EU Copyright Directive. [1] The Czech, Danish, German and Slovak Wikipedias will display a non-dismissible blackout overlay and block access to content for 24 hours. These communities will be utilizing similar texts and designs for their blackouts. [2][3][4][5]
In addition to these communities, there are others discussing the possibility of a banner and/or a blackout. Discussions and voting appear to be actively occurring on Estonian, French and Italian Wikipedias whilst other community conversations have either stalled or gone quiet.
The final vote on the Directive is expected to take place on Tuesday, March 26. This means that communities looking to make an impact on the outcome of the vote will need to make decisions surrounding community actions, by the latest, the evening of Sunday March 24.
There is a good deal of coordination and technical work that goes into these initiatives. In order for us to best support communities in the implementation of their decision, we want to encourage interested communities to come to a decision, whether for or against, and reach out to us as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Seddon
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/03/20/four-wikipedias-to-black-out-over-eu-copyright-directive/
[2] Czech/Danish blackout: https://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NASA&banner=EU_Blackout_2019&uselang=cs&force=1
[3] Czech banner: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trademark/Request_a_license_form/zh&banner=EU2019_banner_large&uselang=en&force=1
[4] German blackout: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NASA&banner=EU_Blackout_2019_de&uselang=de&force=1
[5] Slovak blackout: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fundraising_2011/Jimmy_Letter_002/en-gb&banner=EU_Copyright_SK_Parliament&uselang=en&force=1