On 13 January 2012 14:22, Bastien Guerry <[email protected]> wrote: > Liam Wyatt <[email protected]> writes: > > > 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. > > Fair enough. But is it really the case that most of the GLAMs are > just providing copies? Just wondering. >
Well if it's a public cultural institution I would certainly hope that they're not giving us the only copy of the file! That would be a terrible use of their role as guardians of their country/region/city heritage to outsource their hosting costs to us and not have an in-house database! > > > 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... > > I still expect some of them to react in a way that will make them think > twice before participating to an upload project. But maybe that's just > me being pessimistic. > Any cultural organisation that is proactively donating multimedia to Wikimedia knows that we're not "merely" a host like Flickr Commons or YouTube etc. They know that there is a statement of principles, of cultural free-access, that comes with working with us. Whilst Wikipedia might have an editorial policy of Neutrality, GLAM organisations especially understand that fighting for cultural access is a non-neutral activity and requires people to take a stand. So I am not pessimistic about this potentially negatively affecting our reputation with GLAMs. In fact, quite the contrary, I would not be surprised if many individuals in GLAM (and other) organisations would privately be very supportive of us making such a principled stand because we are at liberty to make such statements in a way publicly funded organisations are not. Many individuals from cultural organisations have privately told me that they appreciate how we take a stand on the non-copyrightability-of-scans (a.k.a. Bridgeman v. Corel) even though they can't say that in their official capacity. I suspect that fighting SOPA might be similar. -Liam _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
