Dear all
I hope you had a lovely bank holiday weekend and are enjoying the lovely
weather (at least, it's lovely here in Scotland!)
I wanted to make sure that you have the date of Wikimedia UK’s next AGM in
your diaries, taking place online on Saturday 1st July from 10am to 12
noon. Please book your place via Eventbrite
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/639329851797>.
The AGM will include reports from me, the Chair and the Treasurer, and is
an important opportunity to ask questions about the charity’s work. The AGM
is also when our annual trustee elections take place. This year we have one
vacancy for an elected trustee, and are keen to hear from members of the
Wikimedia community in the UK who would be interested in joining the Board.
The process for standing for election is detailed here
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Board/Becoming_a_trustee> and the deadline
is Friday 16th June. Please feel free to reach out to me if you’re thinking
of standing, particularly if you have questions about the process or the
role of the Wikimedia UK board.
Remember that to stand for the election, or indeed to vote at the AGM, you
need to be a current member. All members should have received an email
about the AGM on Friday so if you didn’t receive one and think you should
have done, please email katie.crampton(a)wikimedia.org.uk. You can apply for
or renew your membership here <https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Membership>.
It only takes a few minutes and costs £5 a year.
Members can also propose resolutions for consideration at the AGM. A
resolution could be about a change to Wikimedia UK’s governing document
(our Articles of Association
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Articles_of_Association>) or a change to our
policies. If you want to propose a resolution please email us at
info(a)wikimedia.org.uk by this Friday 2nd June. You can either propose the
suggested text of the resolution yourself, or we can work with you to draft
something.
If you have any general questions about the AGM, please contact Chuks
Ogbonna, copied in.
All best
Lucy
--
Lucy Crompton-Reid (she/her)
Chief Executive
Hello, hive mind - with all this talk of whether our projects (even
Wiktionary!) should be caught by the UK OSB, I was hoping to crowdsource an
answer to the question: who else might be unfortunate bycatch for this
ill-scoped "online safety" law?
I'll set out the key definition below, and hopefully you'll have some
ideas. I'll start the ball rolling with *OpenStreetMap* and *FixMyStreet*
...
For context: we're hoping to build support for an additional exemption for
services *"provided for the purpose of indexing, manipulation, discussion
and/or making available of content in the public interest, including but
not limited to historical, academic, artistic, educational, encyclopaedic,
journalistic, and/or statistical content"*. It'd be helpful to have other
examples of good projects that would benefit from being spared the OSB's
requirements, not least all the red tape that it requires!
*Scope of the OSB **(ignoring parts dedicated to porn sites - and glossing
over a couple of smaller details, such as how combination services are
treated):*
a. Applies to any “User-to-user service” and “search service” that "has
links with the UK" (e.g. UK users) and isn't exempt.
b. A U2U service "means an internet service by means of which content that
is generated directly on the service by a user of the service, or uploaded
to or shared on the service by a user of the service, may be encountered by
another user, or other users, of the service (...) it does not matter if
content is actually shared with another user or users as long as a service
has a functionality that allows such sharing". It also "does not matter
what proportion of content on a service is" UGC.
c. A search service is "an internet service that is, or includes, a search
engine", that is run by the provider of that site (rather than just
embedding Google Search into your own), but "does not include a service
which enables a person to search just one website or database."
*Exemptions are set out in Schedule 1. These include:*
1. Services where the UGC is limited to
- emails, or SMS/MMS;
- one-to-one live aural communications;
- comments or reviews relating to the provider's own content;
- sharing of such comments or reviews (about a provider's own content)
on a different internet service;
- services limiting user expression to like/dislikes buttons, emojis,
yes/no voting, or rating/scoring;
(but the exemptions above do NOT apply if regulated provider pornographic
content is published or displayed on the service)
"Provider content" is "content published on a service by the provider of
the service or by a person acting on behalf of the provider (including
where the publication of the content is effected or controlled by means of
software or an automated tool or algorithm applied by the provider or by a
person acting on behalf of the provider)."
So that would include, say, guest posters on your own blog, or columnists
on the Daily Mail website, but is unlikely to include WMF projects (since
contributors aren't acting "on behalf of" WMF).
2. Intranets and search engines that are run internally by *businesses.*
3. Services provided by UK public bodies or foreign sovereign powers
(except for childcare services, which have their own narrower exemption).
4. Certain UK-regulated (e.g. Ofsted-regulated) education/childcare
providers.
Thanks in advance!
*Phil Bradley-Schmieg* (he/him)
Lead Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
NOTICE: *This message might have confidential or legally privileged
information in it. If you have received this message by accident, please
delete it and let us know about the mistake. As an attorney for the
Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice
to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff
members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see
our **legal disclaimer*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>*.*
I'm currently drafting an article on William Francis Gordon of Lichfield. He gave the east window to Porthill church, and an interior view would be good.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:St_Andrew%27s_Church,_Porthill
is as much as Commons has about the church, near Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Can anyone help out?
Charles