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Wikimedia and Politics

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erik_moeller at gmx

Nov 24, 2004, 6:16 PM

Post #1 of 9 (199 views)
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Wikimedia and Politics

Hello everyone,

I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly
theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to
contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm
looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up
with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.

There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:

1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,
so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and
which ones we cannot become involved in.

2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is
inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of
key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of
our projects.

There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We
don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"
Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to
virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we
shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new
projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they
also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.

In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an
issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new
one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.

I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future
survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are
creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not
just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,
which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense
political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most
traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.

We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change
society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need
to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases
to do that.

== What we can do ==

As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our
individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are
other options:
- press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
- the Wikimedia newsletter
- the Foundation website
- a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
- websites which we create for specific campaigns
- endorsement of a petition or initiative
- real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal-
oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
- legal action, defense funds

== Issues which concern us ==

The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:

* Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose
patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open
source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should
clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new
one.

* Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it
would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.
Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which
means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not
explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects
by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because
there's not yet a strong lobby against them.

The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia
are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction
books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant
reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented
cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free
sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.

I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be
about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing
initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the
software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing
this effectively.

* Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be
aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the
United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the
public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which
do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.

Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages
for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our
Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain
countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in
terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their
positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to
build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.

Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public
domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US
government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably
neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an
interest in counterbalancing this influence.

Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a
handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to
POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under
a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that
basis.

* Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of
reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts
have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are
interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy
alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a
proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you
to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some
museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're
currently on shaky legal ground.

Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One
example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the
Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this
art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on
photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous
to us, and we should fight them on every level.

* Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly
concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue
where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United
States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship
under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful
with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But
NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral
one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.

* The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
countries, solar or curb power would be good.

== How to proceed ==

With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I
believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just
mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and
can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse
their petitions, campaigns and open letters.

I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind
which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action

The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are
about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.
In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the
Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's
precedent.

Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative
on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on
the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on
it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching
our energy and resources.

Regards,

Erik

beesley at gmail

Nov 25, 2004, 2:57 AM

Post #2 of 9 (192 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

> I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
> matters, such as copyrights and patents.

This has the potential to disqualify the Wikimedia Foundation from
501(c)3 status which would mean, not only, that we need to pay tax,
but also that we would then be severely restricted in the choice of
grant applications open to us.

According to http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=120703,00.html
: "no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a
substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence
legislation (commonly known as lobbying)."

If the Foundation were to have any such involvement, we would need to
be very careful that our activities were aimed at educating people
about these issues as opposed to encouraging people to lobby about
them.

> 2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
> context of our content-based projects.

Political activism will reflect on the projects even if it does occur
outside of the context of them. For many people, there will appear no
difference between the Wikimedia Foundation campaigning for something
and "Wikipedia" doing so.

> The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
> seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
> agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:

How is "agreeable to the largest number of people" to be defined? A
simple majority? Doing something like this which would deter even a
minority from wanting to be involved with Wikimedia projects is not
something we ought to be risking.

> * Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
> www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
> one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
> Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
> effectively illegal through them.

Considering many of the developers of MediaWiki do not regard it a
Wikimedia project, the relation between the Foundation and software
patents is not as close as it might seem.

> * Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
> for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous.

I personally feel this is an exaggeration. The GFDL is based around
the protection of copyright; it is not about removal of it.

> * The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
> directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
> Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
> Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
> decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
> machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
> print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
> which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
> countries, solar or curb power would be good.

I'd completely support this last point. I don't view this as a
political activity in the same way as the other examples you cite.
Encouraging the distribution of Wikireaders is absolutely part of the
Foundation's mission, and should have no negative effect on our
charitable status.

Angela
(my personal views, not necessarily those of the Foundation)

robin.shannon at gmail

Nov 26, 2004, 2:58 AM

Post #3 of 9 (193 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

while i fully support all the causes you mentioned, i would hate to
see the foundation become a political body. That having been said, a
group of wikimedians, unattached to wikimedia who campaign in an
organised way for the rights of wikimedians, and for freedom of
information, i would consider joining and supporting.

[[User:The bellman]]
rjs

On 25 Nov 2004 02:16:00 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller [at] gmx> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
> matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly
> theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to
> contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm
> looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up
> with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.
>
> There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:
>
> 1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,
> so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and
> which ones we cannot become involved in.
>
> 2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
> context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is
> inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of
> key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of
> our projects.
>
> There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We
> don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"
> Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to
> virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we
> shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new
> projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they
> also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.
>
> In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an
> issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new
> one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.
>
> I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future
> survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are
> creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not
> just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,
> which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense
> political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most
> traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.
>
> We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change
> society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need
> to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases
> to do that.
>
> == What we can do ==
>
> As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our
> individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are
> other options:
> - press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
> - the Wikimedia newsletter
> - the Foundation website
> - a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
> - websites which we create for specific campaigns
> - endorsement of a petition or initiative
> - real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal-
> oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
> - legal action, defense funds
>
> == Issues which concern us ==
>
> The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
> seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
> agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:
>
> * Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
> www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
> one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
> Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
> effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose
> patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open
> source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should
> clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new
> one.
>
> * Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
> for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it
> would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.
> Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which
> means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not
> explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects
> by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because
> there's not yet a strong lobby against them.
>
> The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia
> are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction
> books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant
> reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented
> cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free
> sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.
>
> I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be
> about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing
> initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the
> software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing
> this effectively.
>
> * Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be
> aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the
> United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the
> public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which
> do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.
>
> Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages
> for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our
> Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain
> countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in
> terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their
> positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to
> build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.
>
> Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public
> domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US
> government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably
> neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an
> interest in counterbalancing this influence.
>
> Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a
> handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to
> POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under
> a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that
> basis.
>
> * Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of
> reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts
> have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are
> interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy
> alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a
> proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you
> to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some
> museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're
> currently on shaky legal ground.
>
> Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One
> example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the
> Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this
> art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on
> photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous
> to us, and we should fight them on every level.
>
> * Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly
> concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue
> where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United
> States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship
> under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful
> with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But
> NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral
> one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.
>
> * The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
> directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
> Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
> Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
> decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
> machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
> print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
> which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
> countries, solar or curb power would be good.
>
> == How to proceed ==
>
> With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I
> believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just
> mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and
> can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse
> their petitions, campaigns and open letters.
>
> I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind
> which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
> proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action
>
> The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are
> about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.
> In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the
> Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's
> precedent.
>
> Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative
> on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on
> the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on
> it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching
> our energy and resources.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l [at] wikimedia
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade [at] jabber

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

wikipedia at earthlink

Nov 26, 2004, 3:24 PM

Post #4 of 9 (192 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

Angela wrote:

>>I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
>>matters, such as copyrights and patents.
>>
>>
>This has the potential to disqualify the Wikimedia Foundation from
>501(c)3 status which would mean, not only, that we need to pay tax,
>but also that we would then be severely restricted in the choice of
>grant applications open to us.
>
>According to http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=120703,00.html
>: "no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a
>substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence
>legislation (commonly known as lobbying)."
>
>If the Foundation were to have any such involvement, we would need to
>be very careful that our activities were aimed at educating people
>about these issues as opposed to encouraging people to lobby about
>them.
>
>
For a little more information on this, I should mention that the
restriction in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code ("no
substantial part of the activities" of the organization may be aimed at
"attempting to influence legislation") does not contain an exception for
legislation that is somehow related to the organization's purpose. And
even efforts to educate people can be interpreted as "grassroots
lobbying" under IRS rulings and disqualify an organization from
501(c)(3) status. In particular, efforts at voter education that
coincide with election campaigns tend to come under scrutiny for this;
perhaps more so, in fact, than similar efforts that coincide with the
consideration of specific legislation.

How is it, then, that we see general nonprofit organizations getting
involved in politics? One option is to create a separate organization
under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code for political
activity. This second organization can still be exempt from taxation
itself, but significantly, donations to it are not tax-deductible. The
alternative is for the organization to elect to be subject to section
501(h) of the Internal Revenue Code, which replaces the "no substantial
part" restriction with specific limitations on the organization's
political expenditures.

The basic requirement with a 501(c)(4) lobbying affiliate is that the
two organizations "be separately incorporated and keep records adequate
to show that tax deductible contributions are not used to pay for
lobbying." (Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington, 461
U.S. 540.) Whether additional restrictions apply to the relationship
between the two organizations is not always certain, either in IRS
regulations or in terms of the U.S. Constitution. For the sake of
simplicity-don't laugh-I've left out political organizations under
section 527, which are somewhat similar in concept, but less likely to
be affiliated with a specific 501(c)(3) organization and have different
IRS reporting requirements.

Section 501(h) creates a different set of restrictions, and requires the
organization to report its political expenditures to the IRS regularly.
The IRS publication cited by Angela discusses the 501(h) option briefly.
The exact expenditure limitations are based on a percentage of overall
expenditures and capped at $1 million overall. However, "grassroots
lobbying", which is what I guess we might focus on most, is subject to a
lower scale and cap.

In either case, the effort needed for the Wikimedia Foundation to get
involved in any substantial kind of political activity would add
considerable complexity to financial and accounting matters. I'm not
sure if our financial procedures are in a state to support this kind of
change, although certainly they need to get there, regardless of how
politically active we become. However, the Foundation's mission as I
understand it is education and the dissemination of information, and I
think any political activity should be incidental to that mission.

--Michael Snow

wiki_tomos at inter7

Nov 27, 2004, 12:56 AM

Post #5 of 9 (191 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

I would say there are things we can do to our
direct benefits, and less costly.

Regarding copyright, yes, perhaps many Wikimedians
do have concerns about strong copyright protections
like the lenths of protection, copyright for
non-creative aspects of database, anti-circumvention
prohibition, and potential expansion of indirect
infringements are discussed on mailinglists and on
various pages.

But copyleft licenses and their likes (such as
CreativeCommons Public Licenses, not all of which are
copyleft) enable us to deal with that strong protection.

It is more directly to our benefit to promote GFDL,
and we do not have to influence any legislation to do that.

Also, it is very beneficial for us to help FSF to revise
the GFDL so that we have more flexibility regarding its
requirements, though I know English wikipedia interprets
it rather liberally, and not having serious problems.

As a sidenote, regarding the length of copyright protection,
I am not sure if the shortening of the protection period
would result in an immediate release of currently protected
works into the public domain. When I see the legal texts
and relevant court cases, it is often decided that legal
changes do not affect the already copyrighted works
unless it is beneficial to the authors and other copyright
holders (But I know mostly about Japanese stuff, so it may
be different for other countries).

We can also try to solve digital divide without lobbying.
We can promote and distribute our free content. How about
a promotional team who can talk to potential users about
our content and answer questions they might have, introduce
them whom they should talk to for technical, legal, and
other questions?

Regards,

Tomos

Anthere9 at wikimedia

Nov 27, 2004, 7:29 AM

Post #6 of 9 (191 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

Michael Snow <wikipedia@...> writes:

> In either case, the effort needed for the Wikimedia Foundation to get
> involved in any substantial kind of political activity would add
> considerable complexity to financial and accounting matters. I'm not
> sure if our financial procedures are in a state to support this kind of
> change, although certainly they need to get there, regardless of how
> politically active we become. However, the Foundation's mission as I
> understand it is education and the dissemination of information, and I
> think any political activity should be incidental to that mission.
>
> --Michael Snow

Thank you Michael for all these details.

I suppose that any decision in the sense of changing the goals of the
Foundation itself and the tax category it belongs to in the USA would probably
impact the goals and very likely the tax categories of all the local
associations as well.

Perhaps can Aurevilly tell us more about this the possible legal implications
he can think of ?

Anthere

anthere9 at yahoo

Nov 29, 2004, 10:37 AM

Post #7 of 9 (194 views)
Permalink

Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

I have been thinking for several days about how to comment Erik mail.

Just as Erik, and many others, I see Wikipedia as having a very important political role, just as the encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert had.
Of course, bringing information to those who do not have access to information, to fight ignorance, obscurantism, superstition, manipulation, propaganda, give
people the tools to create their own opinion, to give them facts so as to defend their opinions, to allow them to make informed decisions, is political.

But this goes further.
Showing that we can work on a global project without being stopped by language issues is also political.
So is the fact of proving we can have thousand of people working constructively together with models oscillating between consensus and participative democracy.
So is the fact to demonstrate teaching is not an art restricted to experts, but that all of us have little bits of knowledge we can offer to the others. We are all worth something when it comes to teaching through Wikipedia.
Allowing people not to only rely on official TV and radio network for their information feed is also political.
So is to push people to read critically rather than blindly.
Showing that we can work together on the net in spite of disagreements leading to wars in real life is also political. We do not deny we have disagreements, we just learn to recognise we do not agree, and we learn to handle the differences.
And building a system which defense relies on letting doors open rather than building walls is indeed a very political act.
These are just examples, but there is no doubt in my mind we could change the world in more ways than just in providing knowledge.

All this to say that we do politics each time we click on the edit link. And I think there is more power in working on the projects so that they expand and improve, than in any signature at the bottom of a petition.

However, we do it gently. It is discreet. It is like a slow wave attacking a sand castle.
We prove things can happen and we show they are good.
This is more important than political advocacy or lobbying. We can change the things for better just by focusing on what we are doing *now*. And we can also just discuss with other people making things change.

I think getting WMF *directly* involved in political matters could possibly endanger our model, damage our image of neutrality, hence hurt our ability to raise funds for example or lead to censorship from some people currently ready to help our content to be widely available.
It could damage our non profit status, hence again our ability to raise funds.
It could upset some participants as well.

Some of the examples you cite Erik, do not seem to me to be problematicin the least, I think we could very well pursue some issues.
For example, fundraising meant to get used PCs with Linux and putting a Wikimedia Content Reader application on them does not appear to me to belong to political activism proper, and are very interesting ideas which several people have started to explore. I do not see how they could be problematic in any sense, and I would totally welcome a proposal from you for such a project in the coming months.

Other examples do appear much more potentially problematic to me, in particular quick actions for laws and such, which could be post validated.
I would say that anything controversial should not be quickly decided and post approved, but on the contrary, be met with much much care and slow building consensus.

Generally, I would recommand that we watch our steps. And generally, I think that it is neither Wikimedia Foundation, nor the local associations roles to get directly involved in political lobbyism, though some exceptions could naturally be considered ;-)

What is above reflects *my* opinion on political involvement.

The board discussed this topic on last sunday, and Angela will come with notes upon what our collective opinion and suggestions are, later in the week.

Anthere

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maveric149 at yahoo

Nov 29, 2004, 10:52 AM

Post #8 of 9 (194 views)
Permalink

Re: Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

--- Michael Snow <wikipedia [at] earthlink> wrote:
> ...
> In either case, the effort needed for the Wikimedia Foundation to get
> involved in any substantial kind of political activity would add
> considerable complexity to financial and accounting matters.

Yes, getting things under control under the current framework is the highest
priority.

> I'm not
> sure if our financial procedures are in a state to support this kind of
> change, although certainly they need to get there, regardless of how
> politically active we become.

Not yet - we have information flow and verification issues - but we are working
on it. I've been keeping the books off-line using the information I have but
don't want to publish that until I'm able to check some things with Jimbo (we
have both been a bit busy to do this part though; my schedule will open up in
January).

> However, the Foundation's mission as I
> understand it is education and the dissemination of information, and I
> think any political activity should be incidental to that mission.

I agree. But once the Foundation has found its feet and humming along nicely,
then I think we could explore the issue in more detail.

-- Daniel Mayer

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jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte

Nov 30, 2004, 12:43 PM

Post #9 of 9 (193 views)
Permalink

Re: Wikimedia and Politics [In reply to]

Erik,

Answering your always bright and structured point of view, I'd like to point
out that up to now I had the idea that even if you believed in straight and
long copyright terms and in the positive aspects of patents you were
nevertheless welcome to contribute to the free Wikipedia and to the other
projects. For instance, *I* think I could have a different point of view
regarding copyright and patents. I don't think, still an example, that great
photographers are *wrong* when they want to protect their works as long as
possible.

The more the wikimedia communauty is getting specific about its political
goals, the narrower this coummunauty is. This is the great power of NPOV,
everybody can feel at home. I do think you can be a good man and yet
disagree with every items of your "issues which concern us". I like
wikimedia not questionning my opinion and not telling things on my behalf
that I would disagree with. And by the way, would I, and some others, ever
contribute to any wikimedia projects if wikimedia was tagged, even slightly,
as a political organization, a linux-free-content-environnemental-no
patent-no copyright bunch of lobbyists ? I don't think so. Like many people,
I'm very comfy with not getting into politics at all, I love being a lazy
and even a sheepish dude as to plenty of political issues. That's my right
:)

So I can add that I'd rather political activism be out of the wikimedia
goals. Not to mention that this kind of activism isn't like a brand new
idea, plenty of respectable organizations are dealing with that kind of
issues, and it seems very simple to join them in case a political nerve is
itching you. An "open" project should remain in my opinion a free
agglomerate of point of views ; when you're starting to pick up one point of
view, you're closed to the others and ignore their good sides.

Now, answering Anthere and just to be exactly fair, political lobbying, in
the sense Erik thought about it, would not be in itself a problem with the
French tax law about deductibility. For instance, becoming a member of
Amnesty International still makes you in France eligible to tax
deductibility up to 60 % of your membership fees (max 20 % of your taxable
income).

villy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller [at] gmx>
To: <foundation-l [at] wikimedia>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 2:16 AM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Politics

| Hello everyone,
|
| I would like to open up the issue of the WMF getting involved in political
| matters, such as copyrights and patents. This has so far been mostly
| theoretical, but the rapid growth of our organization allows us to
| contemplate it, and maybe get our feet wet in a few example cases. I'm
| looking a couple of years into the future here, in part so we can come up
| with a good strategy, but also to open up minds and demolish taboos.
|
| There are two primary risks I see with any political activity of the WMF:
|
| 1) The Board may be too small to make representative decisions on its own,
| so we need a validation process to figure out which issues we can and
| which ones we cannot become involved in.
|
| 2) Advocacy is, by definition, never NPOV, so it cannot happen within the
| context of our content-based projects. A certain extent of alienation is
| inevitable with any position the WMF takes, political or not, but it is of
| key importance that this does not affect the perception or the reality of
| our projects.
|
| There is one risk which I am sure people will bring up, which is that "We
| don't have the resources to do this! We should stick to what we can do!"
| Without wanting to sound too dismissive, that objection is raised to
| virtually every new activity we define. It is valid in the sense that we
| shouldn't start anything which we cannot properly finish. But as new
| projects and new activities attract people from within the community, they
| also attract newcomers, who can cross over into other projects.
|
| In cases where there are strong and experienced groups working on an
| issue, such as software patents, it will often be unwise to start a new
| one, though we may often be able to assist in many ways.
|
| I consider wise political decision-making of key importance for the future
| survival and prosperity of our organization and our projects. We are
| creating a gigantic, global community here, which will increasingly not
| just be Wikipedia, but "the Wikimedia community". This group identity,
| which we will build and strengthen in the coming years, is of immense
| political value, for activism, for its technological superiority to most
| traditional organizations, and for issue-centric fundraising.
|
| We have a great chance to make a world-wide difference, and to change
| society for the better by engaging in smart advocacy and lobbyism. We need
| to proceed carefully, of course, and we can use a few agreeable test cases
| to do that.
|
| == What we can do ==
|
| As I said, any political advocacy has to happen outside the context of our
| individual wiki projects, whose neutrality is inviolable. But there are
| other options:
| - press releases by the Wikimedia Foundation
| - the Wikimedia newsletter
| - the Foundation website
| - a to-be-created email list (wikiaction?)
| - websites which we create for specific campaigns
| - endorsement of a petition or initiative
| - real political lobbyism, AKA "employing professionals to engage in goal-
| oriented discourse with democratically elected representatives"
| - legal action, defense funds
|
| == Issues which concern us ==
|
| The WMF should stay out of general political issues, I think - we should
| seek out those which have a demonstrable impact on our work, and which are
| agreeable to the largest number of people. Here are a few examples:
|
| * Software patents. Various open source leaders have just endorsed the
| www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative, and I can easily see the WMF being
| one of the supporting organizations. Why does the issue matter so much?
| Because a project like MediaWiki, the software which we use, can be made
| effectively illegal through them. We don't necessarily need to oppose
| patentability of software per se, but we should seek an exemption for open
| source software at the very least. This is one matter where we should
| clearly work with the groups that are there, rather than creating a new
| one.
|
| * Copyright terms. Pretty much everyone who's not a corporation or works
| for one agrees that our current copyright terms are ridiculous. Hence, it
| would be relatively easy to build an effective movement to reduce them.
| Most works are protected for 70 years after the death of the author, which
| means that if I died tomorrow, anything which I have created which is not
| explicitly licensed will only be available for use by Wikimedia projects
| by 2074. Worse, these terms get extended on a regular basis, because
| there's not yet a strong lobby against them.
|
| The potential benefits of even a short reduction in terms for Wikimedia
| are enormous. Thousands of works - encyclopedias, photos, non-fiction
| books, and so forth - would suddenly become available to us. A significant
| reduction, say to a fixed 15 years term, could lead to an unprecedented
| cultural renaissance as millions of works become available for free
| sharing by all of humanity. This is absolutely in line with our mission.
|
| I would estimate the overall cost of an effective global campaign to be
| about $50,000 at least. What we could do fairly soon is endorse existing
| initiatives and groups who are working on this, but unlike for the
| software patent issue, I don't see any single one out there which is doing
| this effectively.
|
| * Copyrights on government-produced materials. As most of you will be
| aware, content created by employees of the federal government of the
| United States in their official capacity is automatically put in the
| public domain. Few other governments have similar rules - and those which
| do tend to use "non-commercial only" licenses.
|
| Changing these rules should not be too hard, as there are clear advantages
| for any government which does this. For instance, right now, many of our
| Wikipedia background articles on the political situation in certain
| countries come directly from the US State Department. This is not good in
| terms of NPOV, and other countries have a strategic interest to have their
| positions represented in works like Wikipedia - which can then try to
| build a neutral picture from a large assortment of public domain sources.
|
| Another example: voanews.com is a US government news site, and thus public
| domain. Wikinews could use its articles, essentially publishing US
| government propaganda (if it is accepted by the community as reasonably
| neutral). If Wikinews becomes important, other countries will have an
| interest in counterbalancing this influence.
|
| Let me make this crystal clear: It's the current situation - just a
| handful of countries putting their materials into the PD - which leads to
| POV. The more countries put there materials in the public domain or under
| a truly free license, the more neutral material we can create on that
| basis.
|
| * Specific copyright issues. One example would be the copyrightability of
| reproductions of images which are in the public domain. So far, courts
| have ruled in our favor on this issue, but many corporations are
| interested in changing this. That would allow corporations, in an unholy
| alliance with museums, to effectively put public domain works into a
| proprietary state: Photos have to be licensed, and museums don't allow you
| to take your own unless you comply with some kind of agreement. Some
| museums already try to do that, though they all know that they're
| currently on shaky legal ground.
|
| Another example is art which is permanently exposed to the public. One
| example would be the wrapping of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the
| Bulgarian artist Christo. A German high court has ruled that, because this
| art installation was temporary, the artist would hold commercial rights on
| photographs of the wrapped Reichstag! Such precedents are very dangerous
| to us, and we should fight them on every level.
|
| * Censorship. This is of course a very broad issue, but it clearly
| concerns us quite directly. It is also, interestingly enough, an issue
| where we can open up new sources of funding. For example, the United
| States government has funded organizations which fight against censorship
| under totalitarian regimes which it opposes. We should be very careful
| with using the "C-word", and try to be cooperative if at all possible. But
| NPOV is not negotiable, and if a wiki project cannot operate as a neutral
| one, then we should work to change the laws to make that possible.
|
| * The Digital Divide. There are quite a few things we can do which
| directly relate to our wiki projects in order to bridge the Digital
| Divide. One idea I like is refurbishing used PCs with Linux and putting a
| Wikimedia Content Reader application on them. We could try to create a
| decentralized, voluntary distribution network for such refurbished
| machines. We can also run fundraising campaigns specifically to distribute
| print editions, or to buy and distribute specialized small, cheap devices
| which are likely to become mainstream in the near future. For developing
| countries, solar or curb power would be good.
|
| == How to proceed ==
|
| With all this future talk, is there anything we can do right now? I
| believe so. There are existing initiatives working on the issues I just
| mentioned, and on others which concern them. We should catalog them, and
| can support them prominently on the Foundation Website, and we can endorse
| their petitions, campaigns and open letters.
|
| I think there needs to be a process for political activity of any kind
| which is similar to the procedure for creating new projects:
| proposal => discussion => poll / consensus => board approval => action
|
| The Board could handle issues which require quick actions: laws which are
| about to be passed, initiatives by other groups, lawsuits, and so forth.
| In such cases, there could be a post-approval process to validate the
| Board's actions, but they should generally only be taken if there's
| precedent.
|
| Within the next 6 months or so, I would like to start one such initiative
| on the software patent issue, i.e. take an official Foundation position on
| the matter and support the organizations, especially in Europe, working on
| it. We can move forward here one issue at a time, without overstretching
| our energy and resources.
|
| Regards,
|
| Erik
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l [at] wikimedia
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|

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