[Foundation-l] Fight for Freedom of Geographic Data - how can Wikimedia help?

[Jakob Voss]

Hi,

There is an oportunity - no: necessity - for active lobbying for Free 
Knowledge in the European Union. The Proposed European Commission 
Directive on European Spatial Data Infrastucture (INSPIRE) is 
endangered to put more intellectual property rights on geographica data 
in the European union.

See http://publicgeodata.org/WhatIsInspire and
http://space.frot.org/docs/inspire_directive.html

Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia chapters and Wikipedians obvoiously 
should be interested in changing the European Directive to free 
Geographic Data. In my point of view more than a petition or contacting 
members of the parliament is needed (but of course these are basics). We 
  need creative ideas of lobbying[1], simple examples why geographic 
data needs to be free etc. Wikipedia is known and loved so maybe we 
could use it's popularity to advert free geographic data. Last but not 
least ideas also have to be implemented - that's the worst problem: in 
my experience Wikimedia project's community members are lazy and slow in 
doing something that is not *directly* related to their everyday work in 
Wikipedia and Wikimedia organisation's community members like me are 
busy, busy, busy. Any suggestions? I'm still searching for an occasion 
and easy example [2] to convince your grandma, get into the media etc.

The discussion can be held at the public foundation-l mailing list, 
can't it?

Greetings,
Jakob

[1] for instance influencing the people at this conference
http://www.direktportalen.com/dynaweb/gavlekongress/index.asp?page=2748&child=2732

[2] I'm sorry but the reasons given at 
http://publicgeodata.org/WhySignThePetition and 
http://space.frot.org/docs/uninspired.html and 
http://space.frot.org/docs/why-free.html anre not very convincing - you 
need something that influences Mr. average in his normal life. For 
instance show Wikipedia (free, amazing, growing, flexible) and how 
navigation systems could be with or won't be without free geographic 
data. Well, there should be better examples...