[Foundation-l] European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy

[effe iets anders]

Hi all,

Thanks for sharing this. Wikimedia Nederland is working on a reaction which
has been draft-translated into English as well. We were invited by the Dutch
ministry of legal affairs to give our view on this green paper, to be taken
into account for the national government reaction. We have done this[1],
attended an informal meeting at the ministry with other stakeholder
organisations and were included in the national reaction as well.

We are still working on a reply of our own as well. It will be in Dutch,
companied by an English translation. We have already invited all the other
chapters to send in the translation or a translation of the translation (in
French, Hungarian or Swedish etc) themselves. Even though the odds are small
that the EC will actually listen to us, the consequences are of such serious
nature that we should definitely do whatever we can to help this process
ahead in a positive direction.

You can find the draft reaction and translation of that reaction on the
website of Wikimedia Nederland. The draft [2] (Dutch) has been written after
the meeting at the ministry by some great Wikimedians (Thanks Elly, Esther,
Fruggo, Jose, Marco, Wutsje and others :) ) and is now draft-translated into
English[3]. If you can wait until thursday you can use it under one little
condition: let us know what you do with it :). That is necessary for the
motivation of the volunteers who worked on it, as you might understand :)

We also informed other stakeholder institutions such as CC NL, Stichting
Copyright en Nieuwe Media, Free Knowledge Institute and FSF-Europe. I know
from the Stichting Copyright en Nieuwe Media that they have sent in a reply,
and CC NL and FKI were considering. Unfortunately I heard nothing back from
FSFE.

Copyright is a tough thing, and sometimes, not so often, you have a chance
to change it in a *positive* way. However, it is also an opportunity for
Walt Disney and other copyright holder organisations to try and extend. So
we all might have to step up, and do our best. I don't know how receiving
the EC is towards replies from individuals, but it might definitely be good
to have organisations sign this piece, and send it in! If your chapter is
not working on it, approach the board, and ask them whether they want to do
it, see if you can help them with this hard task.

Bare in mind, the deadline is on November 30.

Best regards,

Lodewijk Gelauff
(board member WMNL)

ps: if you would have read our chapter report two months ago, you would have
known this all already ;-) Join the chapter report-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports (no discussion
there, only reports coming in monthly)

[1]: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/en/Consultation
[2]: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/Reactie
[3]: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Groep_Groenboek/en/Reaction

2008/11/14 teun spaans <teun.spaans op gmail.com>

> Agree.
>
> And perhaps other organizations working with copy left licenses could be
> informed?
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Teofilo <teofilowiki op gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The European Commission published in July a "Green Paper - Copyright
> > in the Knowledge Economy" (1) .
> >
> > In §3.4. They talk about the possibility to adapt copyright law so
> > that user-created contents would become easier, and they ask to send
> > them feedback by 30 November 2008 at markt-d1 op ec.europa.eu .
> >
> > I thought it would be kind of cool if the foundation or the individual
> > european chapters would use this opportunity to give them some hints
> > of what a Wikipedia-friendly copyright law/directive should look like,
> > or a few concrete examples of the worries we are having in present
> > time with the current laws. In particular it should be stressed how
> > laws in some country lacking a "fair use" restriction for pictures
> > and/or without a "panorama freedom" are cumbersome. Non copyright
> > issues like the ltalian law on cultural goods should also be
> > mentioned.
> >
> > I am sending the same message on the village pump on Commons :
> >
> >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#European_Commission_Green_Paper_-_Copyright_in_the_Knowledge_Economy
> >
> >
> > (1)
> >
> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0466:FIN:EN:HTML
> >  (English)
> >
> > Other languages are available here :
> >
> >
> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52008DC0466:FR:NOT
> >
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> >
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