[Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities

[David Monniaux]

Just to avoid misconceptions:

I do not expect that anything will change soon in the policies of French
cultural institutions. It is extremely difficult to change the policies
of large, traditional organizations unless there is a strong political
will to do so - and I do not think that putting up free content online
is a national priority.

My foremost goal is to get the ideas of free content and free access
across, to the common public and to the people in charge.

This is not so easy, because there are many misconceptions about what
Wikipedia is about. For instance, contrary to what is often implied by
the media, Wikipedia is not a free-for-all where anybody can do anything
anytime - but many people believe it and thus are horrified by such a
pandemonium, and because of this, they simply won't listen to what we
say. Simply overcoming such misinformation is already considerable work.
It took us years to be considered respectable enough to be heard by
officials, and to get a short op-ed printed in the press. This means
that in the meantime, myself and others (Florence Devouard, Pierre
Beaudouin, and so on) had to go to many meetings, whose outcome many
often just have been that people that did not know us would then see
that we are not dangerous anarchist teenagers or raving idealists, but
sensible, responsible folks.