Wikimedia movement under DMCA attack! - Wikimedia-l

6 Nov 2017

Friends, it took me a month to join forces and get the courage to write the
story below.

The Wiki Education Brazil user group has had its website [1] shutted down
due to an attack using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the
most shocking of this story is that the legal threat was made by a "member"
of the Wikimedia community: Mr. João Alexandre Peschanski, who uses the
username Joalpe.

My unreal saga began on October 7th when I received an email informing me
that the WMF Support and Safety team had received a complaint from Joalpe
that his copyright was being violated by the publication on the I CCBWIKI
(I Brazilian Scientific Congress of Wikipedia) website of a paper which he
is a co-author.

I thought this situation was very strange and I imagined it was a
misunderstanding. I promptly in good faith emailed Joalpe, copying WMF
team, trying to figure out what could have led to this misleading
interpretation that we were committing a copyright infringement. In the
email I reminded him that he knows several members of the Wiki Edu Brazil
group and that he could communicate directly with us if he was bothered
with something and that, if he wanted to, I could remove from the site the
work of which he is a co-author, even though it is on the CC-BY 3.0 license.

To my surprise I never received a reply from Joalpe. Instead, two days
after my contact arrives a message from GoDaddy (company where the Wiki Edu
Brasil’s site is hosted in the United States) informing that we have
received a "complete DMCA complaint", made by the Center for Research,
Innovation and Diffusion in Neuromamatics of the University of São Paulo
(CEPID NeuroMat - USP), signed by João Alexandre Peschanski.

In this complaint he alleges that in the page that I made with the texts
sent to the I CCBWIKI there would be a text of which he is one of the
authors and that he would have revoked our authorization to publish it,
accuses us of not giving the due credits in the work and implies that we
would have copied the content from another conference, prior to CCBWIKI,
where it would have been originally published.

I lack words to describe my revolt at such absurd lies. First: not only was
the authorization not revoked but also a Creative Commons publication could
not have its permission revoked for sharing. Secondly, in fact his name did
not appear on the page listing the papers, because the main author of the
article did not register it correctly in the system, but when clicking on
the file his name was in the credits correctly. Third: the published
content was exactly the one sent by the author David Fernando Levon Alves
on August 29, 2016, and until the current unfortunate legal threat I did
not even know of the existence of Intercom conference, where I now know
that the same paper had been presented in September 9th.

And Joalpe knows all about it! Even on page that he links[2] in his
complaint saying that is proof of him having revoked our authorization for
publication, he clearly says that he disallows the publication of the paper
his is the main author, and that he would talk to the other author to
propose withdrawing the paper in question, and the chair of the event
promptly replied indicating that the dialogue should continue through the
conference management system (it is worth noting that he said he would like
to withdraw his work because he has never seen an academic conference that
does not pay for the transfer and accommodations for all, an argument that
does not make any sense to anyone that minimally knows the reality of
Brazilian academy).

Still bewildered by this nonsense I had to decide what to do. The DMCA
notice gave us two options: either to remove the illegally posted file or
to contest the complaint. Thinking about justice, we would obviously opt
for the second option because we were not doing anything illegal. But
within the cruel logic of the DMCA, we were given an absurd 24-hour
deadline to send a response and our page was already off. It is worth
mentioning that at that moment our host removed all the pages in the domain
wikibrasil.org, and not just the page with the annals of the previous
conference. In this way, projects such as IWSC and WLM that were in key
moments of their execution were also unavailable to users. So, to the very
annoyance we had to remove the file (as if we were guilty!) In order to
request that the sites be republished.

Yet stunned by this, I asked for help from the WMF’s Trust & Safety and the
Legal Team. Both were sympathetic, but the WMF's legal support policies
provide support only for problems regarding content hosted on the
foundation's servers, and since that was not the case, I could not receive
formal legal support. Unsure, fearing the possible legal implications of
the complaint, and without knowing how to defend myself I spoke with groups
of free culture and defense of freedom of expression and concluded that the
best way to defend myself would be to publicize the ongoing persecution.

The days that followed were very difficult for me. Whenever I had to deal
with any wiki subject I was taken by a feeling of revolt and could not do
anything. I spent hours trying to write these words but I just couldn’t do
it. Having to face a legal threat through the DMCA may already be something
to wrap the stomach itself, but having to do it knowing that who denounces
know he is lying, says himself a defender of free culture and is even a
member of the Wikimedia community is unbelievably revolting!

We all know that wikis communities are not a bed of roses and I have
several times left and I stopped editing because of the bullying done by
users like him. But this time I won’t shut up! The destructive behavior of
this person has escalated in a way that is forcing me to spend all my time
studying United States copyright law to defend myself from something I did
not do, and he knows it well. This user used his influence to move the
largest university in Latin America into an international legal threat
against the movement he claims to be a part of. We need to stop it!

For those who do not know this user, it is worth pointing out that he leads
a users group, and receives funding from WMF to conduct outreach
activities. I repeat: This person who uses the DMCA to legally threaten
members of the Wikimedia community is receiving money from our movement to
fund their projects. We can not accept this anymore! Joao Alexandre
Peschanski (a.k.a. Joalpe) should be boycotted in every possible way by the
Wikimedia movement. A copyright troll should never receive grants, be
accepted in our spaces and have the right to speak on behalf of our
community!

In addition to measures within the Wikimedia community I also ask for your
support to help with my defense of Joalpe's attack on the legal world. I
call upon all advocates of free culture, freedom of knowledge and the
Wikimedia movement to endorse the following petition [3], addressed to the
University of São Paulo, demanding that it immediately withdraw the
complaint of violation to the DMCA made against the Wiki Educação Brasil
group, and that it immediately stops pursuing free-culture movements in
Brazil and in the world:
https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justiça…
<https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justi>

I publish this letter still frightened, but already without fear and
confident that united we will overcome one more attack that threatens not
only the Wikimedia movement, but the whole culture of free knowledge.

"Imagine a world in which every person on the planet has free access to the
sum of all human knowledge. That is what we are doing." Jimbo Wales

Sincerely,

Henrique de Andrade (User: HenriqueCrang)

[1] http://wikibrasil.org

[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki_Education_Brazil/Events/Congresso…
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki_Education_Brazil/Events/Congresso_Cient>

[3]
https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justiça…
<https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justi>