[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA

[Bastien Guerry]

Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com> writes:

> Well if it's a public cultural institution I would certainly hope
> that they're not giving us the only copy of the file! 

Not the only copy... but perhaps the "only freely licensed one".  

> That would be a terrible use of their role as guardians of their
> country/region/city heritage to outsource their hosting costs to us
> and not have an in-house database!

Compare these two pictures:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Toulouse._Caf%C3%A9_Albrighi._Juillet_1905_(1905)_-_51Fi1_-_Fonds_Trutat.jpg

http://basededonnees.archives.toulouse.fr/4DCGI/Web_DFPict/034/51Fi1/ILUMP17664

Same pictures.  The first one is free.  The second one is advertized as
"Tous droits réservés DIRECTION DES ARCHIVES MUNICIPALES DE TOULOUSE".

> Any cultural organisation that is proactively donating multimedia to
> Wikimedia knows that we're not "merely" a host like Flickr Commons or
> YouTube etc. They know that there is a statement of principles, of
> cultural free-access, that comes with working with us. Whilst
> Wikipedia might have an editorial policy of Neutrality, GLAM
> organisations especially understand that fighting for cultural access
> is a non-neutral activity and requires people to take a stand. So I
> am not pessimistic about this potentially negatively affecting our
> reputation with GLAMs.

I agree with you here.  And I was only half ironic in my previous post:
I hope that GLAMs will understand the strong need to host their content
on their website under a free license.  And a copy on Wikipedia if they
want to reach the free encyclopedia.

-- 
 Bastien