Hi,
As the Wikimedia Summit 2019 ended recently, it would be great if the
representative from Wikisource User Group can share his experience and
submit a report.
Regards
Bodhisattwa
Hi all,
As you may know, the election of the Affiliate-selected Board seats (ASBS)
has begun.
We, as the Wikisource Community User Group, can take part in this election
and elected two person to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The meta page
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate-selected_Board_seats/2019 give
some lengthy informations, here is a quick summary:
- since April 15 and until April 30, people will candidate to seat at the
board, at this step we can ask question to candidates and *endorse* two
candidates.
- between May 8 and May 31, we can vote.
For this whole process, I am the primary contact but we *all* make the
decision, I'm merely the messenger of the group here.
Here is how I suggest to proceed:
- right now, write together questions and criteria for candidate we want to
endorse (WMNL shared this table to help
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Assessing_candidates_for_the_Affiliate…
but it's very general, we should adapt it to this usergroup needs ; here is
copy of this table https://lite.framacalc.org/asbs2019-wcug we can work
on). You can also ask question in your own name.
- in May, we vote for the candidates inside the user group (not sure how to
best handle this part, I would prefer it to be public but we can do it in
private too) and then, I will take the results and vote in the name of the
user group.
- is anyone interested to be the secondary contact? (I'm a bit busy so I
could use some help ;) )
- if you feel the need, we can do an online meeting to talk about it, but
as we are scattered all around the globe, finding a good timeslot is
challenging. Would anyone be interested? (or is this mailing list enough?)
- obviously, any question, idea, remark, suggestion are welcome!
Cheers,
~nicolas
Hi all,
As you all know that, the Wikimedia movement strategy working groups
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…>
have started working on the final stage of the process i.e. building
recommendations, which are supposed to be delivered by November this year.
The only step that will be remaining after that will be implementing the
recommendations by WMF next year. These recommendations will significantly
change the movement in the future, even the least radical ones might have
impact on the movement which will affect us all in many ways. As a
volunteer serving on one of the working groups, I would like to encourage
you all to take part in the process, so that your dreams and ideas for a
better tomorrow get reflected in the recommendations; your experience,
insight and voices are very much important to shape the future of the
movement.
I am in the Roles and Responsibilities working group
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working…>,
which is focusing on the governance and organizational movement structures.
For last few months, we have tried to identify objectively about what are
going well and what are not in the current existing structure, where are
the pain points and where are the happy ones; and we tried to map them as
best as we could. The goal is to identify a future structure for the
Wikimedia Movement that will create less friction and more synergies. To
understand that in a better way, we framed few scoping questions for
community conversation (see here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/2019_Co…>).
The questions are:
1. What structures, processes, and behaviors will enable us to include
all voices (including e.g. current contributors and emerging audiences)
in our decision-making?
2. Which responsibilities are better placed at a global or local level?
3. To ensure equity, how should conflict management and resolution
be structured
across the movement?
You can give your valuable feedback regarding these questions in this
thread or in the village pumps of your wiki projects or in meta
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/20…>
or in a google doc or mail us or in any other way possible. Just let us
know or share with us the links where you are giving feedback or discussing
about these things. If you want to do video chat and document your
feedback, please let us know, we will try our best to fulfill that. If you
do not want to reveal your identity or user name in the public forum, but
still want to document your feedback, please let us know and we will ensure
that. If you need any clarification about these questions or any doubts
about the whole process, you can mail us. Our mailing address is at
wg2030-rolesandresponsibilities(a)wikimedia.org . Apart from these questions,
you can share your thoughts about anything with us which you think might
benefit the strategy process or outcome.
Please note, that community conversation is a continuous process and we
will document and work on your valuable feedback whenever you share them
with us till September this year.
Regards,
Bodhisattwa
On behalf of Roles and Responsibilities Working Group
Hi everyone,
I am re-sending this email as the previous one sent on April 8 didn't go
through.
So, as an effort to document projects related to Wikisource, we have
started by writing the first case study about *Bengali Wikisource 10th
Anniversary Proofreading Contest
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/Bengali_Wikisource_10…>*
held
in 2017 with the help of contest organizers Bodhisattwa
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bodhisattwa> and Jayantanth
<https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jayantanth>.
If you know about, or have organized interesting Wikisource related
projects that you would like to be documented in form of a case study, feel
free to reach out to me at sgill[image: ﹫]wikimedia.org.
Best
Satdeep
--
Satdeep Gill (pronouns - he, him)
Program Officer
GLAM and Underrepresented Knowledge
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone,
In our efforts to document Wikisource related campaigns and contests, I
have prepared a list of Wikisource Proofreading contests/campaigns
organized by different communities over the years.[1] Feel free to editing
existing information or add any missing contests into this table. Also, If
anyone is interested in sharing challenges or any other feedback around
organizing any of these contests/campaigns, please reach out to me at
sgill(a)wikimedia.org.
Best
Satdeep
[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource_proofreading_contests#History
--
Satdeep Gill (pronouns - he, him)
Program Officer
GLAM and Underrepresented Knowledge
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
I've been scanning books since the 1990s and thought that
OCR of Blackletter (Fraktur) was a problem that someone
else would solve, so I didn't have to. For books in normal
typography, I'm using ABBYY Finereader with great success.
Feeling comfortable with Finereader, I have not really
followed the development of the free software Tesseract.
Every time I tried it, it performed worse than Finereader.
I know Finereader can be trained to read Fraktur, but
this is a lot of work and only works for one Fraktur font
at a time. I also know there is (has been) a special
version of Finereader that reads Fraktur, and that some
library projects use.
Recently I tried Tesseract again, now in version 4.0,
and found to my surprise that it worked quite well for
Fraktur in Danish and Swedish, using the separate
configuration files dan_frak and swe-frak. (The Danish
version also reads Norwegian, which in the 19th century
was very similar to Danish.)
However: It doesn't work at all for Finnish text, and
reading Swedish seems to be a lot slower than Danish.
Is there anybody who knows these things and can answer
how the Swedish reading of Fraktur can be improved to
match the Danish, and how a Finnish version can be
created? I can provide quite a lot of training data
in the form of scanned books and proofread text.
Is there an active mailing list or web forum for
Fraktur issues with Tesseract?
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/
Hi,
I am interested to learn about the thoughts of the Wikisource community at
large and the Wikisource user group about the new branding proposal? Will
the user group provide any feedback in this proposal?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_resear…
Regards,
Bodhisattwa
Uh-oh... More "fun" soon, shortly after
<https://controlleddigitallending.org/> and
<https://blogs.harvard.edu/copyrightosc/2019/03/01/fair-use-week-2019-day-fi…>
debates.
Federico
-------- Messaggio inoltrato --------
Oggetto: Before the CJEU soon: the question of digital exhaustion
Data: Mon, 01 Apr 2019 11:01:00 +0000
Mittente: //copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/author/sabasluiter/ <>
Before the CJEU soon: the question of digital exhaustion
Saba Sluiter
*Introduction: digital exhaustion*
One of the main limitations to the right of distribution in European
copyright law is the principle or rule of exhaustion. This rule, known
as the first sale doctrine in US law, means that the right of
distribution is exhausted by the first sale or other transfer of
ownership of a copy of the work made by the rightholder or with his
consent (Article 4(2) InfoSoc Directive). This rule has mostly been of
straightforward application to physical copies of works, but can it be
applied to digital copies of works too? That is the question in the case
of /Tom Kabinet/
<http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=9ea7d2dc30dda…>
in a nutshell.
Tom Kabinet is a Dutch company that aims to create a second-hand
marketplace for e-books. It operates a website where you can upload used
e-books and buy used copies of e-books. It started its business in 2015.
Soon after, two organizations of publishers filed for a preliminary
injunction to stop Tom Kabinet from selling used e-books. Tom Kabinet,
however, believes it can rely on the CJEU’s ruling in /UsedSoft/
<http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-128/11> and claims that
there is digital exhaustion under EU law.
*The story so far*
The case started a couple of years ago when Tom Kabinet opened up a
platform that allows people to sell their second-hand e-books.
Publishers were unhappy with Tom Kabinet’s dealings and very quickly
filed for a preliminary injunction. In its preliminary ruling, the court
of Amsterdam
<http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2015/01/28/the-dutch-courts-apply-used…>
did not impose an injunction, as it was unclear whether the resale of
e-books is allowed under European Copyright law.
In the preliminary appeal, the Appellate Court of Amsterdam followed the
district court’s ruling, but added that Tom Kabinet does not effectively
prevent the sale of illegal copies through its platform. It therefore
ordered
<https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2015:66>
Tom Kabinet to cease its activities until it applies effective methods
to prevent this.
*The Court of The Hague*
After the preliminary procedure, the publishers went to the Court of The
Hague for a ruling on the merits. The publishers claim first that
offering the books for download infringes the right of communication to
the public. The Court of The Hague did not agree, because there is no
public, as only the person who buys the book can access it.
Second, the publishers argue that when Tom Kabinet copies a book to its
servers it makes an unauthorized reproduction of the work. Even when Tom
Kabinet sells an e-book, a copy of the work remains stored on its
servers. The Court considered that, following /UsedSoft/, even if the
right of distribution were exhausted, Tom Kabinet is not allowed to keep
a copy on its servers after it has resold a copy.
Third, the publishers consider Tom Kabinet’s practice an infringement of
their right of distribution. Tom Kabinet argued, in response, that the
right of distribution is exhausted by the first legal sale. The Court,
guided by the CJEU’s ruling in /UsedSoft/, found that there was a
previous sale, although it held – contrary to Tom Kabinet’s claims –
that the Computer Programs Directive is not applicable to e-books. It
continued by explaining that under EU law it is unclear whether this
would be allowed. After identifying several legal arguments for and
against digital exhaustion of e-books, the Court of The Hague settled on
three questions for the CJEU
<http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=9ea7d2dc30dda…>,
which it argues must be answered even if it is considered that Tom
Kabinet infringes the right of reproduction.
The first question is whether Tom Kabinet’s business actually involves
the right of distribution under Article 4(1) InfoSoc Directive. In
simple terms, does uploading for subsequent downloading by users in Tom
Kabinet’s model mean distributing a work? If the answer is yes, it
becomes relevant whether there is exhaustion of the right to
distribution within the meaning of Article 4(2) InfoSoc Directive. The
referring court asks whether the right to distribution is exhausted by
the first sale of the e-book in the scenario at issue.
The other two questions relate to the right of reproduction. The first
of those questions refers to the relationship between digital exhaustion
and the right of reproduction in Article 2 InfoSoc Directive. The
national Court wants to know whether, if there is in fact digital
exhaustion in the terms above, it should be considered that there is
consent to acts of reproduction necessary for the transfer of the
lawfully acquired copy of the work between successive acquirers (and, if
so, which conditions apply). The final question tackles the same issue,
but from the perspective of Article 5 InfoSoc Directive, on exceptions
and limitations. It asks whether the latter provision is to be
interpreted as meaning that the copyright holder cannot object to the
acts of reproduction necessary for the digital resale of exhausted
copies of works and, if so, which conditions apply.
*Considerations*
The Court of The Hague considered that the InfoSoc Directive does not
make clear whether intangible copies are also covered by the provisions
on the right of distribution. It found indications in favour of and
against a broader interpretation in the preamble of the Directive. It
also noted that a tangible copy of a work can be considered functionally
equivalent to an intangible copy, inviting the application of equal
treatment, although it noted that tangible copies suffer from wear and
tear, which might not apply directly to intangible copies. Finally, it
found that the CJEU has not given an answer to these questions in in its
previous judgments. With the /Tom Kabinet/ case, the CJEU gets a clear
chance to do so.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Copyright Reconstructed: Rethinking Copyright’s Economic Rights in a
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Copyright Reconstructed: Rethinking Copyright’s Economic Rights in a
Time of Highly Dynamic Technological and Economic Change
<https://lrus.wolterskluwer.com/store/product/copyright-reconstructed-rethin…>
by /P. Bernt Hugenholtz /
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------------------------------------------------------------------------