[WikiEN-l] NY Times: Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book

[Durova]

There's an importance to this which needs to be communicated better, and
quickly.  Most of the world's image archives are not openly accessible.  As
some of them open their doors, Flickr is competing with Commons to become
the primary point of deposit.  We risk a situation where WMF loses out on
valuable institutional relationships and our volunteers glean the crumbs
from a commercial site.

One of the arguments in favor of Wikimedia Commons is that we have a team of
volunteers who restore historic material.  There's a chance for the donating
archive to get highlights from its collection designated as featured
pictures, which run on the main page.

The fact that our restorations get reproduced in Time Magazine, in Wired,
and elsewhere ought to be strengthening that argument.  Credibility requires
credit.  We are competing against a well funded commercial enterprise for
large institutional donations; we need every advantage we can muster.

-Durova

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 8:34 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/6/25 Siobhan Hansa <helenseal at gmail.com>:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >> And why do you care anyway? Vanity? Curiosity? Is it that important?
> >> Is a little piece of text on some idiot's webpage the difference
> >> between you contributing your time next time and not? Is the
> >> gratification of your name in cyberspace your primary motivation for
> >> producing useful free images?
> >> (These questions are rhetorical and deliberately inflammatory. Take
> >> the bait with caution.)
>
> > A less ego bound reason* for wanting to see some acknowledgment -
> > especially through a link to Wikipedia or the like - is that it is
> > advocacy for the intellectual commons. This could encourage others to
> > get involved or to consider making their content free.
> > Also if the importance of free content isn't widely understood it will
> > be harder for policy makers to come to good decisions about laws or
> > other public support that might impact it.
>
>
> Yes. It will help the commons considerably for free content licenses
> to visibly be out there and acknowledged. And it's not onerous for a
> newspaper to print "Photo by xxxx, CC by-sa 3.0". Or even "Photo by
> xxx, restored by xxx," even if the restoration wouldn't generate a
> fresh copyright.
>
>
> - d.
>
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