Hello,
2010/6/5 Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com:
Nathan writes:
When the WMF makes a
decision to intervene in the projects, full and informative communication isn't just a nice-if-you-can-get-it side benefit of dealing with a small company - it's essential to maintaining the fabric of a massively participatory and cooperative endeavor.
I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns --
- Consulting with French legal experts before taking any action
- Compelling Gallimard to narrow and specify their takedown demands
- Enlisting community members to implement the takedowns
Yes, but the community was only informed _after_ the texts were deleted. What's surprising to me, and most members of French Wikisource, is that some of the deleted pages are in the public domain in France (works by Jean de La Ville de Mirmont and Charles Péguy, who both died in 1914, so their works became public domain in October 2009). If actually you contacted the community _before_ deleting these pages, you could have informed Gallimard about that, and avoid deleting them. We still don't understand how the French lawyers made this mistake.
Did you know that some of the deleted pages were in the public domain in France? Do you understand that is what led us to think that the decision was not well informed?
(...)
--Mike
Regards,
Yann