[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics - Wikimedia-l

25 Nov 2004

Hello everyone,

I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political  
matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly  
theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to  
contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm  
looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up  
with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.

There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:

1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,  
so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and  
which ones we cannot become involved in.

2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the  
context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is  
inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of  
key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of  
our projects.

There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We  
don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"  
Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to  
virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we  
shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new  
projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they  
also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.

In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an  
issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new  
one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.

I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future  
survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are  
creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not  
just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,  
which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense  
political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most  
traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.

We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change  
society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need  
to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases  
to do that.

== What we can do ==

As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our  
individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are  
other options:
- press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
- the Wikimedia newsletter
- the Foundation website
- a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
- websites which we create for specific campaigns
- endorsement of a petition or initiative
- real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal- 
oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
- legal action, defense funds

== Issues which concern us ==

The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should  
seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are  
agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:

* Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the  
www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being  
one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?  
Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made  
effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose  
patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open  
source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should  
clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new  
one.

* Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works  
for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it  
would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.  
Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which  
means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not  
explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects  
by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because  
there's not yet a strong lobby against them.

The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia  
are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction  
books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant  
reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented  
cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free  
sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.

I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be  
about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing  
initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the  
software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing  
this effectively.

* Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be  
aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the  
United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the  
public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which  
do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.

Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages  
for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our  
Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain  
countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in  
terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their  
positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to  
build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.

Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public  
domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US  
government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably  
neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an  
interest in counterbalancing this influence.

Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a  
handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to  
POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under  
a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that  
basis.

* Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of  
reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts  
have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are  
interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy  
alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a  
proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you  
to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some  
museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're  
currently on shaky legal ground.

Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One  
example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the  
Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this  
art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on  
photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous  
to us, and we should fight them on every level.

* Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly  
concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue  
where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United  
States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship  
under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful  
with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But  
NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral  
one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.

* The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which  
directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital  
Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a  
Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a  
decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished  
machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute  
print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices  
which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing  
countries, solar or curb power would be good.

== How to proceed ==

With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I  
believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just  
mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and  
can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse  
their petitions, campaigns and open letters.

I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind  
which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action

The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are  
about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.  
In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the  
Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's  
precedent.

Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative  
on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on  
the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on  
it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching  
our energy and resources.

Regards,

Erik