Hello Leila,
Just two quick notes on what you've said:
*" We should get comfortable thinking about these trade-offs as we think
about how to bring more diverse people and content to the project" - I face
this argument constantly in my life as an active Wikimedian. University
teachers tell we can have all papers from their university on Commons,
Wikisource, if we allow NC-ND. VIPs tell me they will give a number of
exclusive materials, given that they are blocked from commercial use.
Professional photographers, same story. To all of them I explain this is a
question of a basic principle of the project, the principle of Free
Knowledge, and that this is the essence, this is at the core of Wikimedia
projects, and can't be negotiated. This is how I've been understanding our
communities general thinking and ideals for the many years I've been
around, so changing that to accommodate more diversity really seems
something absolutely alien to our mission as Wikimedians, independently of
the merits of the content that could be incorporated in the projects that
way.
*In order to protect local folklore from "undue exploitation", Mozambique
government has decided that all manifestations of folklore in the country
are protected by copyright, and that they own that copyright. Result: we
end up with an huge cultural gap in Mozambique at the Wikimedia projects.
Not only in Mozambique, but in a number of other countries that apply
similar legal restrictions to this kind of cultural materials.
The solution for both cases has been, for well more than a decade, to
include that content as necessary under special provisions in some of our
projects - SEE EDP at
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy -
depending on approval of the project local community. So the solution for
that problem already exists for long, and this is not only reinventing the
wheel, but doing so at the expense of our most dear core principles and
mission.
Best,
Paulo
Leila Zia <leila(a)wikimedia.org> escreveu no dia quinta, 15/08/2019 à(s)
05:42:
Hi Paulo,
On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 6:38 PM Paulo Santos Perneta
<paulosperneta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If they don't have legal resources, then it is pointless to use NC ND for
the content, as they will not be suing anyone that ignores the license
and
commercializes it anyway.
In practice, this can happen. Two points to keep in mind:
* Building trust and relationships with new communities may require
taking steps that we may not have been taking so far. People operate
in different contexts and they have varying experiences, and we may
sometimes have to change the way we do things to include them and
their knowledge. We should get comfortable thinking about these
trade-offs as we think about how to bring more diverse people and
content to the project. (I'm not arguing that we should do what this
proposal says at this point. We should discuss it though in the talk
page.)
* Having some legal pathway can be attractive to some folks, /even if/
they don't exercise it. This is an assurance that they can have some
control over their culture and the narratives around it and I can see
how this can be important for some marginalized communities. This
middle step may be needed. Also, if the legal pathway is there, they
can always some day decide to pursue it.
If such knowledge can't be freely shared,
then it has no place in
Commons,
in my opinion. If that makes it less visible,
then that is the problem of
the communities that don't share it freely. One cannot have both things
at
the same time.
Two points again: ;)
* Re Commons or not is something we should discuss in the talk pages.
Peter had some really good points early on on this thread about the 3
different options available.
* This won't be only their problem. It will be our shared problem. If
Commons ends up not being the solution, we shouldn't stop there. We
should think through what else we can do to make bringing of their
knowledge to Wikimedia projects happen. While I don't know what the
answers are, I know that we should try more. From a narrow research
perspective: this is immensely important for addressing Wikimedia's
knowledge gaps for the sake of our own immediate users but also for
the sake of indirect users of Wikimedia content. Wikimedia is imo one
of the cornerstones of the Web. The content we collectively bring to
Wikimedia projects is no longer /just/ used directly on Wikipedia
(even that alone is enough argument to attempt to find solutions for
the kind of gaps we're talking about). It's being used by a variety of
technologies to build algorithms and machines that have impact on
people's lives. Gaps in Wikimedia can become a source of bias and gaps
on search engines, home devices, school material, ... .
I'll keep the specific comments about the proposals for the talk pages.
Best,
Leila
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