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

[Liam Wyatt]

On 13 January 2012 13:27, Bastien Guerry <bzg at altern.org> wrote:

> A nice side-effect of such a black-out will be to send GLAM
> institutions this message: "Don't use Wikipedia as a storage
> service, use your own websites and free licenses instead."
>
> I would not spend time, energy and money on a service that
> can block my contents without even warning and/or asking me.
>
> Especially if I'm a public service, which is often the case
> for GLAMs.
>
> --
>  Bastien
>

We have never proposed Wikimedia Commons as a storage service for GLAMs. We
have always said they should have their own catalogue and share copies of
their multimedia with us (and everyone else) under a free license. That
gives provenance and verifiability. We are not a replacement for publicly
funded cultural organisations investing in their own infrastructure.

Temporarily disabling access in protest is not the same as "blocking my
contents without warning me" - that's actually a closer definition to what
SOPA would enable if it were passed. Furthermore, AFAICT, it would be
equally applicable to Wikimedia Commons, or Flickr or YouTube or any other
place where they might choose to upload/share their content...


-Liam