Hello Massachusetts based compatriots!
Between an established proto-chapter, several academic institutions with alined goals, and several luminaries living and working in the state, a reasonable argument can be made that Massachusetts is the free culture capital of the east coast.
We should totally leverage that.
I'd love to see Massachusetts join Florida and California, becoming the third state to release the majority of government works into the public domain. I think it's doable, but I think it will take time, and possibly lobbyists and money and volunteer hours. In other words, I think it's a worthy long term goal to work towards.
In the mean time, I'd like to put free culture on the Governor's agenda, albeit in a comparatively minor role. The Governor's official Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor) releases all work under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. The fact that it's a CC license at all shows that someone, somewhere in the administration is trying.
What I'd like to do is create a petition asking the administration to release their photographs under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA) license, instead of an NC one. I think it's an eminently achievable goal. The way I see it, we need a few things to make it happen:
1) Research: We need to know exactly what we're asking for. Are we asking for an executive order, or something less formal? Would this apply to future administrations? Who in the Massachusetts State bureaucracy should we be handing this petition to (i.e. whose responsibility does this fall under, since I doubt it's going to go straight to the governor). Also, we would do well to create a list of people we'd like to have sign the document.
2) Petition writing: The petition needs to be well written. It needs to explain our argument clearly and concisely. We need to point out the benefits of making such a change. It needs to be professionally worded and not sound like a rant. You get the idea.
3) Rallying: Before we even release the petition to the public, we're going to want to make sure that all the signatories we want are on board, and we're going to want them to be signing it they day that the petition goes public, or even before then. Momentum is important. Momentum and a list of names with cachet is even better.
Is anyone else interested in this? Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really like to run with this, but I can't do it on my own.
Sven Manguard
<quote who="Sven Manguard" date="Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 08:50:50PM -0400">
In the mean time, I'd like to put free culture on the Governor's agenda, albeit in a comparatively minor role. The Governor's official Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor) releases all work under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. The fact that it's a CC license at all shows that someone, somewhere in the administration is trying.
What I'd like to do is create a petition asking the administration to release their photographs under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA) license, instead of an NC one. I think it's an eminently achievable goal. The way I see it, we need a few things to make it happen:
- Research: We need to know exactly what we're asking for. Are we asking
for an executive order, or something less formal?
I think you would just want them to switch the CC license on their Flickr stream, right?
Would this apply to future administrations? Who in the Massachusetts State bureaucracy should we be handing this petition to (i.e. whose responsibility does this fall under, since I doubt it's going to go straight to the governor).
Who publishes the Flickr stream? Probably it should be addressed the head of that office?
- Petition writing: The petition needs to be well written. It needs
to explain our argument clearly and concisely. We need to point out the benefits of making such a change. It needs to be professionally worded and not sound like a rant. You get the idea.
Why you don't try to right a draft. We can put it on a wiki and others can help improve it.
- Rallying: Before we even release the petition to the public, we're going
to want to make sure that all the signatories we want are on board, and we're going to want them to be signing it they day that the petition goes public, or even before then. Momentum is important. Momentum and a list of names with cachet is even better.
Is anyone else interested in this? Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really like to run with this, but I can't do it on my own.
It's worth a try. I think leveraging the people on this list would be a good start. It's totally possible to over think this. Writing a position and getting it out there is not such a big issue. We should be worrying about how we're going to get momentum and not afraid that we're giong to screw up in some way that is going to lead to that momementum being squandered.
Regards, Mako
I don't live in Massachusetts any more, but as someone who works for a governor (I am a policy advisor to Gov. Heineman here in Nebraska), I don't recommend the petition route as a first step. Petitioning implies that you are trying to overcome some sort of obstacle by a showing of public support, and presumes that such an obstacle exists. I think it unnecessarily sends the signal that you are expecting opposition rather than cooperation. You may just need to talk to the right person.
Your most direct route is to contact his press office (who presumably employs the person who drafted this: http://www.mass.gov/governor/pressoffice/socialmedia/ ) and find out what reason, if any, they have for using CC-BY-SA rather than CC-BY, especially when their Flickr policy seems friendly to the idea of attribution as the only hook for republication (emph. added):
We post all of our photos to Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor.
*If you'd like to use any of our photos for a story, blog post, printing, etc., we ask that you credit, "Photo Courtesy of Gov. Deval Patrick's Office" and include the photographer's name when available.*
Also note that this photo share is hosted by Flickr and is governed by Flickr’s separate website policies, including its Privacy Policyhttp://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/flickr/details.html and Terms of Servicehttp://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html. These policies apply to your use of Flickr. For questions, please contact us http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_contact_us.
Best,
Dick Clark
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Sven Manguard svenmanguard@gmail.comwrote:
Hello Massachusetts based compatriots!
Between an established proto-chapter, several academic institutions with alined goals, and several luminaries living and working in the state, a reasonable argument can be made that Massachusetts is the free culture capital of the east coast.
We should totally leverage that.
I'd love to see Massachusetts join Florida and California, becoming the third state to release the majority of government works into the public domain. I think it's doable, but I think it will take time, and possibly lobbyists and money and volunteer hours. In other words, I think it's a worthy long term goal to work towards.
In the mean time, I'd like to put free culture on the Governor's agenda, albeit in a comparatively minor role. The Governor's official Flickr stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/massgovernor) releases all work under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. The fact that it's a CC license at all shows that someone, somewhere in the administration is trying.
What I'd like to do is create a petition asking the administration to release their photographs under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA) license, instead of an NC one. I think it's an eminently achievable goal. The way I see it, we need a few things to make it happen:
- Research: We need to know exactly what we're asking for. Are we asking
for an executive order, or something less formal? Would this apply to future administrations? Who in the Massachusetts State bureaucracy should we be handing this petition to (i.e. whose responsibility does this fall under, since I doubt it's going to go straight to the governor). Also, we would do well to create a list of people we'd like to have sign the document.
- Petition writing: The petition needs to be well written. It needs to
explain our argument clearly and concisely. We need to point out the benefits of making such a change. It needs to be professionally worded and not sound like a rant. You get the idea.
- Rallying: Before we even release the petition to the public, we're
going to want to make sure that all the signatories we want are on board, and we're going to want them to be signing it they day that the petition goes public, or even before then. Momentum is important. Momentum and a list of names with cachet is even better.
Is anyone else interested in this? Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really like to run with this, but I can't do it on my own.
Sven Manguard
Wikimedia-boston mailing list Wikimedia-boston@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-boston
<quote who="Dick Clark" date="Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 04:59:59PM -0500">
I don't live in Massachusetts any more, but as someone who works for a governor (I am a policy advisor to Gov. Heineman here in Nebraska), I don't recommend the petition route as a first step.
That sounds very reasonable. Thanks for this advice!
Sven, do you want to just send a nice short email to someone in the press office asking about the licensing of the material on the Flickr stream?
Regards, Mako
wikimedia-boston@lists.wikimedia.org