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

[Philippe Beaudette]

On 2/9/12 7:19 PM, Andreas K. wrote:
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> Well, what do "fighting for content online", "providing information about
> legislative initiatives worldwide that impact online content and
> censorship", and "support the advancement of legal conditions that enable
> unimpeded access to information online, worldwide" mean?

Fighting for content online includes thing such as pushing back against
DMCA takedowns, etc.  Providing information about legislative
initiatives is just that - making sure that our community is aware of
things that are going on.  More specifically, building (from within the
community) the ability to track that sort of thing.  That's an area
where crowdsourcing works very very well. 
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> Is this program not in one way or another the result and an extension of
> the recent SOPA blackout?

No.  It was conceived of prior to that, in fact.
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> "We have found that our community has a keen interest in legal and
> legislative issues (and the policy makers in those areas return the
> interest), so we would like to explore new ways to support better the
> community within the goals of the Foundation. We want to improve our
> communication with international communities, ensuring that the voice of
> the global community is heard on important initiatives."
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> How does this not mean that Wikimedia will in part be a lobbying
> organisation? Or in other words, how can you advocate effectively for
> favourable legal conditions without involving lobbying and politics?
By providing our community with the knowledge and the tools to do it...
through creative education, and early involvement in decision making to
attempt to provide us with more options than the full SOPA blackout. 
The whole idea here is to increase community capacity, not to lobby. 
:-)  Although it is possible that there will be (at some point) a
legislative affairs person, for instance, who would track legislation
and provide subject matter expertise on process, that's a far cry from a
traditional lobbying effort. 

pb

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