[Wikimediaindia-l] WikiPuneri - people coming together in Pune

Sat Jan 15 03:14:55 UTC 2011

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 06:46, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Wikipedians in Pune have come together to contribute to Wikipedia and
> Commons. They have formed a Facebook cum Flickr group:
> http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_181231605233363
> http://www.flickr.com/groups/1605961@N23/
> The piece below is the philosophy behind the group. It also gives details of
> some activities we have already carried out.
> Its notable as a ready-made explanation that you can use for your own
> evangelism and available under CC Attribution Sharealike.
> Warm regards,
> Ashwin Baindur
> ------------------------------------------------------
> WIKIPUNERI (Facebook & Flickr group)
>
> Before I explain what WikiPuneri group does, I would like to explain in
> short about Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons is not an encyclopaedia, it
> is a media repository. Wikipedia, as you all know, is the free online
> encyclopaedia which anyone can edit. There are a total of 278 Wikipedias in
> the world, each in a different language. The English Wikipedia is the
> largest with 3,528,428 articles. As of now there are twenty wikipedias in
> Indian languages - including in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi,
>  blah, blah and blah. Of these Marathi Wikipedia is the third in size with
> over 30,000 articles.  In addition there are twenty more wikipedias in other
> Indian languages in the process of being developed. Now why I have mentioned
> this is because all of these use photographs, video clips and sound files.
> Now, it is a waste of space for each Wikipedia to load its images
> exclusively for itself. Hence the Wikimedia Foundation has created another
> project called as Wikimedia Commons or in short just Commons. Commons is the
> media repository. All photos, video clips and sound files are uploaded here
> just once and they immediately become available to all wikipedias.
>
> The number of images on Wikimedia Commons about an important subject say
> Pune city is important. That is because all the images on Commons are free.
> When I say free, I mean free as in free speech as well as in free beer. You
> are free to use them as you wish, even commercially, as long as you
> attribute whose image you have used and as long as you make the material
> available under a free license. These images on Commons are placed under one
> of a variety of licenses that give you these rights and permissions - this
> kind of license is called a free license, which allows you to use the images
> as you wish, as long as you attribute and give free license to people to use
> your work in turn. The most common free license used around the world is the
> Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike license.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License
>
> Why? Why this talk about free licenses? Because images are usually
> copyrighted with all rights reserved by the creator. Because a person who is
> going to break the law and steal or illegally use your image will not bother
> about whether image is copyrighted or free to use. But the law abiding
> person can neither use a copyrighted image whose creator has kept all rights
> for himself without breaking the law nor can he afford it. Usually you have
> to pay a fee ranging from a hundred to tens of thousands of rupees to use a
> photograph commercially per image. Poor people cant afford that, even if the
> cause is noble or good for society. Many people agree to permit use of their
> photos free for a good cause, but it is difficult or sometimes impossible to
> contact people who have good images on Flickr, Picassa or web ste. So a
> repository of free images is required. Wikimedia Commons is exactly that -
> it not only stores images for Wikipedias but also makes them available for
> everyone in society to use, even commercially.
>
> Imagine a person, Mr Patil, who has knowledge which he wants to share with
> the world. Suppose he wants to write a very economically priced book on
> Butterflies Of Maharashtra in Marathi for all the children of Maharashtra to
> read. To illustrate it he will need over three hundred images. If he buys
> the images, the book will be extremely costly and not free or cheap. But he
> can take the images from Commons and use them to illustrate his book. He
> will have to do only two things - acknowledge the person whose photos he has
> used and publish it not under copyright with all rights reserved but with
> free Creative Commons license I mentioned to you. Mr Patil can use these
> images, print the book cheaply and even make a small honest profit.
>
> The free license allows people to use Mr Patil's book in a constructive
> manner. They can make derivatives. A biology teacher takes material from his
> book and makes a chart of common butterflies for display in class rooms. He
> acknowledges at the bottom of the chart that the information is taken from
> Patil's book, mentions the authors of images used and publishes the chart
> under a free lisense. Another person thinks that the book and chart are
> valuable educational resources and translates it into English, Hindi, and
> other Indian Languages. The free license permits them to do so. And so on.
> The information and images get re-used freely, the contributions of all
> people are acknowledged and same freedoms are passed on by means of the
> license.
>
> In such a context, it is important that enough free images are available on
> Commons to empower our people. If you check Wikimedia Commons today, you
> will find very few images of Pune. For example, there are more than 500
> historial places such as temples, wadas, buidings etc in Pune city alone but
> only five such places are covered in Commons. There are images of front gate
> of Shaniwarwada but none of the many wonders inside.
>
> So some photographers of Pune have decided to remedy this by starting a
> programme to add images of historical monuments of our city onto Commons. We
> have formed a group of like minded people on Facebook and Flickr who are
> keen to further this noble cause to help society. We call this group
> "WikiPuneri".  We have already started with our first focus being
> Shaniwarwada the landmark symbol of Pune city which we photographed last
> Sunday. In coming weeks we will add many more images of Pune and Maharashtra
> so that hopefully by the time Wikipedia becomes 11 years of age, all of
> Pune's monuments are photographed.
>
> The other thing we will do is that we will ensure that both Marathi and
> English Wikipedias have articles on all these monuments and landmarks. In
> this way, our exposure of our beloved Pune will increase. People can get all
> the important information about Pune that they need from Wikipedia and
> images from Wikimedia Commons.
>
> On the function on 15th January 2011, as a symbolic gesture, we will be
> uploading in front of everyone for the first time an image which we have
> taken and contributed to Wikimedia Commons. Hopefully that will be followed
> by many, many more!
>
> THIS TEXT LICENSED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS 3.0 UNPORTED (See link in main
> article)

In the broader context, I know of Sarai in Delhi who have used CC
licenses in their books.

Please see http://www.sarai.net/publications/occasional/floss-is-not-just-good-for-teeth

and more specifically
http://www.sarai.net/publications/occasional/contested-commons-trespassing-publics-a-public-record

I wish there was some update or something to the second one.

Then from bangalore I know of Pratham Books
http://prathambooks.org/home.htm who do use the CC license in their
works.

While I had the pleasure of having couple of books from Sarai when I
went the last time there (in Delhi), not so much idea about Pratham
but still it is good to know and share that such an alternative
exists.
-- 
          Regards,
          Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
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