[Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

Ryan Kaldari rkaldari at wikimedia.org
Tue Oct 4 23:50:37 UTC 2011


The WMF isn't allowed to lobby for or against legislation, per our 501c3 
non-profit status in the US. This is not necessarily true for chapters 
though, and definitely not true for the communities.

Ryan Kaldari

On 10/4/11 4:33 PM, Thomas Goldammer wrote:
> 2011/10/5 John Vandenberg<jayvdb at gmail.com>:
>> The WMF is very unlikely to approve of this, as that would be
>> influencing legislation.
>>
> Why should the WMF not (at least try to) influence legislation if that
> helps the goal of distributing free knowledge? I think it should do
> exactly that, whenever possible and suitable, as for instance in this
> case. And it is done by chapters already. Wikimedia Serbia has made a
> good example in this Italian law case on how that can be done (thx to
> Milos), namely for example by writing WM-official protest or support
> notes to politicians, embassadors, etc. Another such thing was what WM
> Germany did in the past for state or federal elections, when they
> interviewed the candidating parties about certain questions relevant
> for the free knowledge movement and publishing these interviews, which
> is a much more indirect way to influence legislation, but still.
>
> BR
> Th.
>
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