[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette

[HaeB]

2012/2/10 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com>:

>
> With the specifics of "is this a political lobbying wing of the WMF or
> not"...
> I think it is quite clear to everyone that Wikimedians have a hard time
> agreeing about *anything* but that the two things we all agree on is "Free"
> (in the technical sense) and that providing a neutral source of information
> is itself an inherently non-neutral activity. We spent quite a lot of time
> talking about the legislative environments where we live (and how
> that interacts with USA laws), what rules govern freedom of panorama in xyz
> country, who can request takedown of what content in what circumstances,
> whether we can provide workaround methods for accessing the content in
> censoring counties, etc. etc. So, in that light it makes perfect sense to
> me that there should be a group of people at the WMF dedicated to
> supporting individuals and Chapters to learn more about those kinds of
> things and to advocate for a "free culture" position when appropriate.
> It is in no way against the WMF's (or Chapter's) mission to "advocate" in
> the way it has done in the past, to general community acclaim, with for
> example,
> - Mike's brilliant response letter to the CIA takedown notice
> http://mashable.com/2010/08/03/wikipedia-fbi-seal/
> - Geoff's filing of an amicus brief to the Goldman v. Holder case
> http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/submissions/domestic/amicus.shtml
> - Submissions to government policy reviews such as that written by the
> Research Committee
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/EU_Consultation_on_scientific_information_in_the_digital_age
>
To add one more example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes#Wikimedia_Foundation_joins_protest_against_Obama.27s_RIAA_appointments

> I imagine that it is this kind of thing that would be in the scope of the
> "advocacy" aspect of this new department. Certainly, I too do not want to
> see an overt political lobbying department created, but that is not what is
> being created. For comparison, the formal job title of Mathias Schindler at
> WM-DE, if I understand correctly, is "project manager - politics and
> society" and it's his job to help write submissions to the German
> parliament when applicable. He's been doing this task for years.
>
> So... vigilance required to make sure we're not losing our way by focusing
> too much on the politics, but we shouldn't be ignoring it or leaving it to
> others to sort out either. From what that project page says it looks like
> this strikes a good balance and we'll see how the department evolves over
> time.
>
> -Liam
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