Hello everyone,
As many of you no doubt know the Copy Right Act 1978 section 15 (3)
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama#South_Africa>
has been a bone of some contention for the South Africa Wikipedia community
for a long time now as it has effectively meant that we here in South
Africa are denied Freedom of Panorama
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama>.
Last week I was fortunate enough to have attended an event organised by Dr
Tobias Schonwetter from UCT (and from Creative Commons South Africa) to
discuss a suggested redrafting of the act. I am happy to say that I feel I
was able to make a good case to the relevant authorities from the
Department of Trade and Industry as well as others present for the need to
revise the act to allow for Freedom of Panorama. I feel they were very
sympathetic to our concerns about the need and desirability of Freedom of
Panorama in South Africa.
Now comes the hard part. We need to work on a suggested revision of
Section 15 (3) (or Section 15 generally) to allow for Freedom of Panorama
and we need to do it quickly as the deadline for submissions to change the
act is the 27th of August 2015.
My suggestion is to use the Spanish or German Freedom of Panorama acts as
guidelines for us which basically state that people are free to take
pictures or otherwise reproduce works that are permanently found outside on
public ways, streets or places (e.g. squares, plazas) and to distribute and
publicly communicate such copies.
Or as the Spanish act says: "Works permanently located in parks, streets,
squares or other public places may be freely reproduced, distributed and
communicated by means of paintings, drawings, photographs and audiovisual
processes." and goes on to state that this "may not be so interpreted that
they could be applied in a manner capable of unreasonably prejudicing the
legitimate interests of the author or adversely affecting the normal
exploitation of the works to which they refer."
I want to notify the community of this opportunity for us to amended the
act as well as the progress the Chapter (Wikimedia South Africa) has made
in possibly getting Freedom of Panorama established in South Africa.
I also wanted to let you know that should you have any comments of your own
on the amendment of the Copy Right act of 1978 then please have a look at
the link here
<http://saha.org.za/news/2015/August/call_for_comment_copyright_amendment_bi…>
for more information as well as the contact details of the contact person
at the DTI.
Thanks and best regards,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
Hello everyone,
This is just a quick reminder that we will be having our 9th Cape Town
meetup this Sunday on the 6th September.
Time & Date: 11:00 - 14:00, 6th September 2015
Location: Truth Coffee, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town 8000, South
Africa
For more information or to indicate that you will be attending (not
necessary but nice to do) please see the meetup page on Wikipedia at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Cape_Town/Cape_Town_9
Everyone with an interest in Wikipedia or Wiki related projects (such as
Open Street Maps, Wikimedia Commons, Wiki How, etc.) are welcome to join us.
As always there will be free coffee.
Cheers,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
Stop SA Government Internet Tax & Censorship Plan
<http://medialternatives.com/2015/08/18/stop-fpb-net-censorship/>
[image: stop net tax]
<https://davidrobertlewis.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/stop-net-tax.png>[image:
stop toll]
<https://davidrobertlewis.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/stop-toll.png>
PRE-PUBLICATION NET CENSORSHIP ENVISAGED BY THE FPB WILL CREATE ENORMOUS
BURDEN OF REDTAPE, THE TERABYTES OF INFORMATION ON THE NET WILL NEVER BE
CLASSIFIED UNDER THE PROPOSED SYSTEM WHICH IS UNWORKABLE, SINCE IT REQUIRES
ENORMOUS LABOUR-HOUR CAPACITY BY THE DEPARTMENT WHO VIEW CONTENT PRODUCERS
AS POTENTIAL FEE DONORS, THIS REPRESENTS A TAX ON THE INTERNET!
UNDER THE PLAN, EACH AND VERY PIECE OF MEDIA UPLOADED ONTO THE NET WOULD
HAVE TO BE FIRST SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF FILMS AND PUBLICATIONS UPON
PAYMENT OF A FEE, IN ORDER FOR THE DEPARTMENT TO CLASSIFY THE MATERIAL,
THIS REPRESENTS A SERIOUS BLOW TO INTERNET FREE-FLOW OF INFORMATION.
INTERNET CONTENT PRODUCERS WHO FAIL TO DO THIS, WILL BE TURNED INTO
CRIMINALS!
SOCIAL MEDIA FEEDS AND BLOGS WILL BE SUBJECT TO THE ACT, WHICH RECKLESSLY
ENVISAGES AN ETOLL.
SOUTH AFRICA’S SECUROCRAT CABINET HAS ALREADY APPROVED THE FPB BILL WHICH
IS BEFORE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
WE CAN STOP THIS NET TAX WITH YOUR HELP!
[image: stop]
*A response from an Arts and Culture perspective*
The Film and Publications Board is a public entity that falls under the
Department of Communications and was created to regulate the
creation, production and distribution of films, games and ‘certain
publications’ through classifications. It has put an argument forward that
South Africa has seen an increase in the use of portable devices for gaming
and social networking which has been economically beneficial, but also
ensures a proliferation of illegal content in and the abuse of social media
platforms. According to the FPB, these instances amount to a threat to the
nations’ morality and stand to undermine the government’s agenda on social
cohesion. In response, they have suggested new regulations that allow the
FPB considerable power to exercise prior restraint in terms of almost all
forms of content that gets produced and published online.
To quote the Right to Know Campaign, “The FPB wants broadly defined powers
to police everything published on the Internet – including blogs, personal
Web sites and Facebook pages, which amounts to censorship and is a
violation of freedom of expression.“ This would be achieved through a) the
requirement that anyone who wants to publish or distribute content to first
apply for a digital publisher’s online distribution agreement with the FPB,
which will require a subscription fee. After that step, the publisher then
has to submit the content to the FPB for classification before publishing (
http://www.r2k.org.za/2015/03/10/statement-stop-the-film-and-publications-b…
).
As the African Arts Institute. we would like to put forward the following
four points in the strongest terms possible:
1) The proposed regulations are *unconstitutional* in as far as they
contradict the right to freedom of speech by implementing the globally
discredited notion of ‘*prior restraint’* (this is at odds with Section 16
(1b) in the Bill of Rights. Pre-publication censorship is a concept which
has already been thrown out by our Constitutional Court in regards to the
press).
2) Second, any system of prior restraint is costly, time-consuming and
wholly *implausible*. The terabytes of information on the Internet could
never be vetted in real time by any human censor board. The backlog itself
would lead to absurdity and the rest of the world would reject us as an
online destination in terms of client-services.
3) Third, proposed regulations allow the state to assume to role of a
moral guardian and parent, this presents a contradiction to the freedom
default in our Bill of Rights. The* state is an unfit parent* for the
censorship and moral policing of the content and expression available in
contemporary forms of communication in South Africa. The FPB, in its
regulations, appears to raise a number of important points about the nature
and limits of free speech and what the internet and instant communication
has done to such debates.
It mentions for example that “in 2014 cases related to freedom of speech
increased from 3% to 22% of the more than the 10 000 cases dealt with by
the Human Rights Commission. Furthermore, social media platforms such as
Facebook and Twitter contributed to this increase and appear to have
shifted the discourse of free speech. These cases are often complex,
containing elements of racism, poverty, ignorance and misguided hatred.”
Sadly however, the proposals do not suggest democratic ways to move these
debates forward and establish mechanisms for the empowerment of family
structures. Parents are better equipped than the state to make decisions
concerning children and the Internet, and the FPB should rather provide
guides for protection of children . Ultimately the regulations cannot
practically prevent the distribution of content that may be harmful to
children. Laws against child pornography already exist and do not
necessitate a system of prior restraint and censorship.
4) Many commentators have compared the bill to apartheid-era
censorship regulations that contradict the democratic culture, openness and
freedom of post-apartheid South Africa. The cases outlined by the board in
no way present a security threat that calls for such drastic measures.
Freedom of expression and media freedom are cornerstones of democracy and
efforts to restrict these present a threat to the entire social
system. Artists and creative practitioners, have a social role to reflect
and comment on society, to agitate, provide relief, joy, curiosity and
amusement and to critique the status quo. Their role is critical in the
societies ability to understand itself, its past and develop a shared
future.
These regulations hold a particular threat for the work of artists and
creative practitioners (from dancers to journalists), whose work is often
to question what is moral, to provoke critical thought and to expose
unpleasant realities. Such content cannot be subject to prior restraint and
pre-publication censorship without undermining the very core of creative
work. If adopted the regulations would have a chilling effect, both on the
production of content and the freedom upon which our economy is based. This
is definitely not the open society that we voted for in 1994 and certainly
not within the spirit of the constitution and the culture of the freedom
struggle which created it. The bill must be rejected.
The African Arts Institute also supports the Right to Know Campaigns in
some of the main concerns that these regulations raise which are around:
a) The time consuming nature of the proposed regulations: pre-classifying
content undermines immediacy of online content.
b)The democratic nature of the internet, which allows open publication
access to anyone who can get online, and thus ensures an enormous diversity
of content, would be undermined by the bureaucratic conditions of
subscription fees and distribution agreements.
c) The suggestion that the FPB would be able to conduct its classification
work in cases deemed necessary to distributors’ premises to classify
digital content is a draconian suggestion that places enormous power in the
hands of the state to invade the physical privacy of its citizens with
little evidence of the threat that would call for such action.
--
*David Robert Lewis*
*PO BOX 4398*
*Cape Town*
*8000*
*South Africa*
*Mobile 082 425 1454*
*Home 021 448 0021*
*Fax **0862396815*
*Skype david.robert.lewis*
Hello everyone,
This is an announcement that preparation for this year's Wiki Loves
Monuments 2015 we have organised two workshops with our event partners
ORMS. Unfortunately the first event this weekend on Saturday is already
fully booked but I will make space for any Wikipedians who wish to attend
and assist in showing people how to submit photographs on commons.
The event is focused firstly on showing people how to photograph buildings
(something that is surprisingly difficult to do) as well as inform them of
Wiki Loves Monuments.
Please let me know if you are interested in helping out.
The next workshop will be held on Saturday the 19th September. I will
forward you all a link to that signup page as soon as ORMS opens up
registration.
Here is a link to the workshop page on the ORMS website:
https://www.ormsdirect.co.za/workshops/workshop/how-to-photograph-buildings…
Thanks,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
Hi Linda,
I can't see the old versions of the page that you were editing because
I'm not an administrator on the English Wikipedia, so I can't tell
exactly what the content was, but looking at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westrand I see that it was deleted three
times, twice for "unambiguous advertising or promotion" and once for
copyright infringement. The policies under which it was deleted are
linked on that page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrightshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising - which links
through to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_…
I'd strongly encourage you to read these policies before returning to
edit again. Whenever a Wikipedia editor sees a new page that doesn't
look like it belongs in an encyclopedia, or which contains text that
was taken from a copyrighted source, it is likely to get deleted
quickly. If the editor who created the page just recreates it without
addressing the issue for which it was deleted in the first place, he
gets blocked. This is normal.
I see on your talk page
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DjMlindos) that Kinu removed
your request to unblock you, and looking at the page history I can see
why.
An unblock request is when you explain to an administrator that your
account should no longer be blocked, because:
a) you should not have been blocked in the first place (because you
did nothing wrong: the admin made a mistake in blocking you) OR
b) you understand what you did wrong, and you promise not to do it again.
In your unblock request, you wrote what basically looks like an
advertisement for your company (
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:DjMlindos&diff=5232589…
)
This is almost guaranteed to keep you blocked for good, because it
shows that you don't understand the purpose of Wikipedia, or at least,
how to interact properly with administrators.
I hope this has helped you understand what happened: please feel free
to ask for more information.
Best regards,
--
David Richfield
[[:en:User:Slashme]]
+49 176 72663368
On 18 August 2015 at 11:38, Linda Sibisi <djmlindos(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Good morning there guys I was blocked by Kinu for trying to edit a page
> about my hometown kagiso and westrand, I would like to activate my account
> and be able to edit. Please help?
>
> My account is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DjMlindos and the page I
> was working on is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westrand.
>
> Mr Linda Sibisi
> Project Manager/Webmaster
> Tel : 011 410 0131
> Cell: 078 264 3605
> www.kagisotownship.co.za
>
> On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Douglas Scott <douglas.i.scott(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> This is an announcement that preparation for this year's Wiki Loves
>> Monuments 2015 we have organised two workshops with our event partners
>> ORMS. Unfortunately the first event this weekend on Saturday is already
>> fully booked but I will make space for any Wikipedians who wish to attend
>> and assist in showing people how to submit photographs on commons.
>>
>> The event is focused firstly on showing people how to photograph buildings
>> (something that is surprisingly difficult to do) as well as inform them of
>> Wiki Loves Monuments.
>>
>> Please let me know if you are interested in helping out.
>>
>> The next workshop will be held on Saturday the 19th September. I will
>> forward you all a link to that signup page as soon as ORMS opens up
>> registration.
>>
>> Here is a link to the workshop page on the ORMS website:
>>
>> https://www.ormsdirect.co.za/workshops/workshop/how-to-photograph-buildings…
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Douglas.
>>
>> --
>> Douglas Ian Scott
>> 司道格
>> Skype: douglas0scott
>> South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikimediaZA mailing list
>> WikimediaZA(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikimediaZA mailing list
> WikimediaZA(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza
Hello everyone,
This is just to let you all know that the next Cape Town meetup will be
happening on the 6th September 2015 at the usual place (Truth Coffee on 36
Buitenkant St, Cape Town). We are going to try and see if we can
coordinate this with the first Johannesburg meetup to also be on the same
day and time.
So if you are in Cape Town and want to catch about Wiki related things (and
get some free coffee) then please feel free to join us.
Details about the meetup can be found on the event's page on Wikipedia at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Cape_Town/Cape_Town_9
Here are the details of the Cape Town meetup:
Location: Truth Coffee, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town
Time: 11:00 - 14:00
Also a quick shout out to remind everyone that we are less than a month
away from this year's Wiki Loves Monuments event. Please let me know if
you are interested in helping out or organising a local heritage hunt event
in your community.
Cheers,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
