-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 22:03:41 -0700 From: Geoff Brigham gbrigham@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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Hi Theo,
Thank you for your email. I'm truly sorry that you feel this way. I have been thinking for some time about the issue of finding alternative solutions to Golan-type issues, and frankly I have not been too optimistic in the past. I think it is an important issue to our mission, however, and I would like to take a closer look to make sure there is not a better solution out there. Achal did contact me about it. Although I have tremendous respect for Achal, his contact was not the reason for my desire to look into this further with the community. As General Counsel, I tend to exercise my own independent judgment. I have received a number of inquiries and I am aware of the past discussions, and, to be honest, the issue has been bugging me for some time: I’m not at all sure there is a solution but I would like to look more closely, especially given the ongoing community concern and available resources the coming month. If you - or any other community member - had contacted me directly, that, in addition to the community discussions, would have been important to me as well. If the community feels this is a bad use of my resources, I am more than willing to reconsider, but I don’t believe that is what people are saying.
It is true that I do not post substantive statements on wikimedia-l anymore. I focus on my team leaving more detailed and comprehensive responses on wikilegal [1], our legal blogs [2], or on the wikis [3]. From my point of view, these venues allow for a more comprehensive development of sometimes difficult legal issues, serve as a more permanent source for future reference and cross-links, and allow for greater community participation on the issue at hand. I do try to announce and cross-link to important legal postings via announce-l and wikimedia-l.
I was surprised to hear that individuals and committees are waiting weeks for responses from Legal. We try to be as responsive as possible. Sometimes people ask tough questions, and it takes time for us to figure out the issue with the individual or committee at issue. But we stay in close contact with those people, often sharing our thinking or drafts and incorporating their feedback. With AffCom, for example, we have been quite interactive as we try to figure out the naming issue and other legal issues. Sometimes the discussion takes longer than we all would like, but our practice, I believe, is to stay responsive and interactive as we work out the solutions with our community members.
If you want to discuss with me offline or on the telephone, I will be more than happy to do so (as I would with anybody in our community).
Take care,
Geoff
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal
[2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/legal/ [3] See, e.g., http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Thought... *
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com Date: Sun, May 12, 2013 at 6:42 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca) To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Geoff Brigham <gbrigham@wikimedia.org
wrote:
As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work. It will probably take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see
if
this is possible. If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully.
This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all materials in the public domain.
Well, this was interesting to note. In stark contrast to the other thread, this email was disappointing for the wrong reasons, maybe it's for me alone. It took about 70 emails and 3 threads, and 2 days of waiting to get a reply from the concerned staff members, but I believe Achal forwarded this to Wikimedia-l less than 12 hours before you responded on a Sunday and agreed to devote a month's resources to it. I don't think more than 2-3 people responded to the issue either on this list or the Indian one. I guess that's the sole difference of the position he occupies, speaking of which, the advisory board appointments seem indefinite, and the list doesn't seem to have been updated - for the past 2 years I have only seen Achal identify himself as that. As far as I know Mr. Prabhala has not even logged in to an existing wikisource project, or uploaded anything on commons beyond anything relevant to the last grant.
I ask because this issue was brought up a couple of years ago on the same list[1] and received a lot more attention locally than this time. Completely regardless of the issue itself, I know of several individuals, and committees waiting for answers from the legal department, and actually expect to wait weeks. I barely see you respond directly on a list these days, and you are agreeing to devote a month's resources at his behest alone so quickly.
Glad to be reminded how somethings change and somethings stay the same. And speaking for me alone, it's disappointing to note the difference in tone above vs. the one being employed on the other thread.
-Theo
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-August/004080.htm... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l