This Saturday we gathered in Stockholm to form a membership
association, to become a Swedish chapter of the Wikimedia
Foundation. We were 51 people at the meeting, including chapters
coordinator Delphine Ménard. The proposed bylaws, which have
received no protests from the chapters committee, were adopted by
the meeting with only minor changes in language. The membership
fee was set to 100 kronor (roughly 11 euro) for the period until
the end of 2008. The association already has 36 members -- with
more expected. A board was elected with Lennart Guldbrandsson as
the chairman. He has already served as "press contact" for the
Swedish Wikipedia. I'm one of the board members. More information
is found on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Sverige
It was a beautiful sunny day and the meeting went very smooth.
Delphine stayed until the next day, and joined some 10 Swedish
wikipedians for dinner on Saturday night. We had a great time.
We're now only waiting for the formal approvement of the Wikimedia
Foundation before we can officially adopt our name.
Swedish tax law doesn't allow any tax deduction for donations, so
we don't have to bother with that. (You can start to donate right
away!) So far, we have a Swedish "Bankgiro" account 5822-9915,
which is the common way for Swedish households to pay their bills.
(What would be the best way for people outside of Sweden to donate
money and pay fees? Should we get a Paypal account? Let me know!)
If you consider that Sweden has 1/9 the population of Germany (9
million vs. 82 million), we already have 1/9 of the membership of
the German chapter (342 / 9 = 38). We're not in a competition, of
course, but as a new starting association we're looking for any
benchmarks, role models and guidelines that we can follow.
Is there any financial information from the Foundation on what
amount of its costs and incomes can be connected to Sweden? I
would personally find it interesting to know where we are today,
so we can see if we're improving or not. There is a risk of
course that people donate to the Swedish chapter, where we dillute
the money on irrelevant or failed campaigns, instead of supporting
the Foundation as we should. I certainly hope that we'll do more
good than harm, but are there any numbers to help us show this?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Dear Community,
The Wikimedia fundraiser begins this Monday, October 22, and will run
until December 22. As in previous years, there will be a banner on the
top of each page, across all projects, which will link to our donations
page.
We look forward to a successful fundraiser. There are a number of ways
you can help: by making a donation yourself, or by putting supportive
buttons and banners
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2007/web_buttons> on your
own site. Or by using some variant of the following text as the
signature on the bottom of your e-mails:
/Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org/
Also, you can show your support by submitting a photo to the "Why Do You
Love Wikipedia" Flickr group <http://flickr.com/groups/wikilove/pool/>.
There is an FAQ for the fundraiser here
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_FAQ>.
Thanks for all your support, and please wish us luck.
Florence Devouard
Chair of the Board of Trustees
----------
/Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org/
Hi everybody,
the Italian government has advanced a proposal for a law that - if
approved by the Parliament - will oblige all the "publishing
productions", regardless of the media they use for their diffusion,
therefore web-based ones included, to be registered into the "registro
degli operatori della comunicazione" (ROC) - "register of the operator
of the communications" (such a register nowadays seem to exist in very
few contries in the world).
Registration is virtually free of charge, but it requires someone (not
yet clear whether a citizen, a professional or an organization - not
yet clear whether Italian citizen of not) to take legal responsability
for the contents.
The current text of law proposal includes among the "publishing
productions" (together with on-line newpapers and other media) also
the personal blogs(!) and non-profit experiences like the Italian
editions of the Wikimedia projects.
"Per attività editoriale si intende ogni attività diretta alla
realizzazione e distribuzione di prodotti editoriali, nonché alla
relativa raccolta pubblicitaria. L'esercizio dell'attività editoriale
può essere svolto anche in forma non imprenditoriale per finalità non
lucrative".
"With publishing activity is meant every activity aimed to produce and
diffuse publishing productions and to the relevant advertising
activities. A publishing activity can be done also under
non-enterpreneurial forms with no lucrative aim".
Wikimedia projects are in a borderline situation: they are WMF's own
and therefore the law of the US applies, nevertheless their Italian
edition are meant for an Italian audience (yes, not only on the soil
of the Italian Republic).
If this law proposal becomes a law and Italian authorities ask for the
registration, we might risk the Italian versions of the Wikimedia
projects to be made unavailable for the Italian citizens.
It's clearly impossible for the Italian version of the Wikimedia
projects to find a person who can bear the legal responsibility for
all the contents.
No one would guarantee personally about Wikimedia projects contents,
and if someone would be so crazy to do that, such person would have
the last word on every Wiki* article. That's absolutely incompatible
with the nature of the Wikimedia projects.
For those of you who can read Italian, you can find some details here
http://punto-informatico.it/p.aspx?i=2092327
and an on-line petition for dumping this law proposal here
http://www.petitiononline.com/noDDL/petition.html
I wonder whether WMF and the Wiki* communities can somehow make
pressure and help spreading this news around the globe.
Hoping for the law proposal to be dumped or changed, or for the law
not applied to Wikimedia projects (although such a law would very
seriously impact on the freedom of speech in Italy), I thank you all
for your attention.
G. (aka Paginazero)
Hello,
Inspired by the success of past Wikimedia conferences held in Europe and
Asia and the hard work of the Wikimania Atlanta Bid team, we have
decided to host the first annual Conference of the Americas.
The theme of the conference is "unity through good works." "The
Conference of the Americas will be dedicated to Wikimedia as well as the
free culture movement, and how it relates to regular people and their
everyday lives wherever they may live or what language they may speak."
Conference of the Americas Atlanta is a community initiative, primarily
organized and run by Wikimedians in the Southeastern United States.
There are about 30 volunteers from metro Atlanta, and 20 others willing
to travel to assist with the event.
This conference is not an attempt to compete with Wikimania nor is it to
make a statement against Wikimania. The Conference of the Americas will
provide an opportunity for Wikimedians who are unable to attend
Wikimania an opportunity otherwise unavailable. Past National Wikimedia
conferences have had no noticeable effect on Wikimania attendance, we
expect the same from the Conference of the Americas.
The Wikimedia Conference of the Americas will be held May 15-18, 2008 at
the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. For more
information please visit our website http://www.cota-atlanta.org/ and
our official wiki http://www.cota-atlanta.org/wiki
If you are interested in volunteering to either help organize or help
run the event, please add your name in the appropriate section on our
list of team members:http://www.cota-atlanta.org/wiki/Team
Facebook users: please join our our Facebook event:
http://git.facebook.com/event.php?eid=5828937313
-Craig Spurrier
Conference of the Americas team
[[n:Craig Spurrier]]
I inform setting up of a new organization for copyright and related laws
in Japan.
http://miau.jp/ (English pages are under construction)
This is Movements for Internet Active Users (MIAU). Members at MIAU will
suggest a new usage of copyright to Japanese goverment and raleted
organisations. One of co-founders is Masayuki Hatta, the translator in
Japanese of GFDL. In Japan, we always use his translation.
Now Japanese copyright law doesn't allow to use fair use as in US. And
Japanese goverment is mulling to make downloding copyrighted files
without permission illigal (Uploding files without permisson is illigal
now). They will suggest to use fair use and deprecate making downloding
files illigal.
Especially, if we could use fair use in Japan, it would be easier to
make contents on Wikimedia projects.
Of course, they will act about other Internet usage and enlighten
effective usage of Internet and Computer like Electric Frontier
Foundation in US.
Please send me messages to them! I will send the messages to make them up.
I am told Google Analytics is running on the Wikimania wiki. I'm not sure
where that would be put, and I'm also not sure that it is appropriate.
Who put it in? And was there discussion before it was done?
Brian.
I commented out the Google Analytics code. I have no opinion on if
it should be enabled or not, but until the community/WMF has decided
on if we want to allow Google Analytics on the sites it should remain
disabled. -Craig Spurrier [[n:Craig Spurrier]]