Hi all,
Sven Manguard and I have been working on a little project to try to get state and local government to release their Flickr photostreams under a license that's compatible with Wikimedia Commons. Right now the MA governor's office releases photos under a CC license that does not allow commercial reuse (and so is incompatible with Wikimedia's requirements) and the Boston Mayor's office releases their photos as "All Rights Reserved".
I'd like to send a letter to contacts of ours at the governor's and mayor's offices requesting this change. However, the letter should come from our Wikimedia New England group rather than from any of us individually. I've included a draft below, *please give me your feedback.*
I want to demonstrate that this isn't just one person making this request so I think its important that this letter be signed by as many of our vice presidents as possible using their real names, cities and, if possible job titles. We don't need to put that information online, but we should include it in official correspondence. If you want your name included in this letter, please send me your information privately. I won't send anything out until I get the okay from (at least) a majority of the vice presidents appointed at our April general meeting.
Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you, Gabe
We are an organized group of volunteers supporting Wikipedia outreach in
New England. We are currently in the process of forming a regional chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, the international non-profit organization that runs Wikipedia and its sister projects, including Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikinews.
One of our group’s goals is to work with governmental, cultural and educational organizations in New England to expand the public’s access to knowledge and creative works. Much of the cultural heritage of our region is not online or is available only under restrictive copyright licenses that make it difficult for citizens to use, share or build upon these works. If this material becomes available to the public under a less restrictive license, it can be used in myriad ways, such as in Wikipedia articles or student projects.
We would like to meet with you to discuss changing the licensing of the photos your office already posts online on Flickr. Right now, the license terms your office uses prevent us from using these photos on Wikipedia. By making this change, you can help insure that Wikipedia can use high-quality photographs to illustrate articles on public officials, government agencies and programs.
Your office is currently releasing these photos under <>, but we would like you to release the images under a CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license. CC-BY allows anyone, including commercial entities, to distribute the work and to adapt or remix it, under the condition that the work be attributed to the original creator. CC-BY-SA adds an additional condition that anyone who alters your photograph must release their version under the same license. Implementing this change is trivial – it simply requires adjusting a setting on your office’s Flickr account.