[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : "Creative Commons: the licence to evolve"

[CherianTinu Abraham]

*The Hindu : "Creative Commons: the licence to evolve"*
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2725372.ece



*A win-win scenario: The objective of the Creative Commons licence is to
encourage improvisation and remixing of content that everybody can benefit
from. Wikipedia is an example.*
*
*
*Cultures evolve gradually, and this cumulative process of evolution is, of
course, driven by various forms of human expression: art, literature,
music, photography and films, to mention a few. With the dawn of the
Internet age, these cultural vents have undergone a renaissance of sorts.*
*
*
*The concept of user-generated content, where users create blogs, music,
photographs and films for mass consumption, was unheard of before the
advent of the Internet. While the concept of ‘public domain', where
creative works are not bound by Intellectual Property Rights and laws was
prevalent even before the Internet, the full potential of this idea has
been manifested with the Internet.*
*
*
*The inherent difficulty with user-generated content is that because a
whole community owns it, it could again get entangled in the prohibitive
intellectual property laws. A plausible solution, which was proposed in
2005, is going really strong today; these are a certain gamut of licences:
Creative Commons. The objective of these licences is to encourage
improvisation and remixing of creative content to facilitate evolution of
culture.*
*
*
*Copyright*
*
*
*The meaning of copyright today is known to all, so are the restrictions
that come with it, which are often taken for granted. The tag ‘All rights
reserved' on creative works has an underlying threat: read ‘Full
restrictions imposed'.*
*
*
*The idea of restricting creative works from evolving is, in effect,
allowing culture to stagnate. The copyright regime, with all its intentions
of keeping users mere consumers and not content generators, effectively
leads to this stagnation by suing and discouraging users who dare to create
based on a copyrighted work.*
*
*
*The enormous possibilities in creating content on the Internet has
encouraged a lot of users to put up their works in the form of blogs,
articles, videos, music and films on the Web. Most of them do it for
personal purposes without giving much importance to the licensing. But it
is essential to adhere to a licence that allows others to further remix,
improve and build upon the available content.*
*
*
*This is precisely is what Creative Commons licences aim at. Creative
Commons licences are copyright laws with the tag ‘Some rights reserved',
and in essence convey that licensees may copy, distribute, display and
perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give
the author the credit in the manner specified by the licence.*
*
*
*There are variants of this licence that provide flexibility to authors to
alter the parameters.*
*
*
*Vigneshwar Shankar, an undergraduate student and a photographer by hobby,
endorses the Creative Commons licences and believes that contributing to
the public domain with such licences is the best thing to do. “Enriching
content for the public domain is crucial. At some point, everyone's going
to be benefited by it. Look at what Wikipedia has become today,” he says.*
*
*
*A ‘read-write culture'*
*
*
*User-generated content with the carapace of the Creative Commons licence
will enrich the public domain.*
*
*
*Lawrence Lessig, one of the founders of the Creative Commons non-profit
organisation, which released the Creative Commons licence, puts it in a
nutshell. He calls the copyright regime based on Intellectual Property
Rights a ‘read-only' mode where the commons, or users, are only allowed to
‘read' the content. With Creative Commons, users will be able to read and
write; that is, users will be able to consume and create, leading to
cultural evolution.*


Regards
Tinu Cherian
pr...@wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news

Important Note : The publisher ( The Hindu ) of the above news article owns
the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not reproduce or
circulate the content further. The information is only shared only with an
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Wikimedia India chapter IRC meetup

[CherianTinu Abraham]

You can find logs of the past sessions at
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats

Regards
Tinu Cherian

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay <
debast...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry, could not join. May someone please share the link to the summary??
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Debanjan*
>
> - Lets make this world a better and more informative place
>
> *
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 9:00 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <
> tinucher...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A gentle reminder !
>> Starting now.
>>
>> -Tinu Cherian
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Naveen Francis wrote:
>>
>>> Hi friends,
>>>
>>> We will have our IRC meetup on Dec 17, 2011, from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm
>>>
>>> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Dec_17,2011
>>>
>>> We from Wikimedia India Chapter invites you all to take part in the IRC
>>> meetup.
>>>
>>>
>>> On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
>>> Thanks,
>>> Naveen Francis
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Wikimedia
>>> Chapter, India Member's Group.
>>> To post to this group, send email to wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com
>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>>> wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
>>> For more options, visit this group at
>>> http://groups.google.com/group/wmin-members?hl=en?hl=en
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] What's in it for me?

[Srikanth Ramakrishnan]

Subha, most of those bullies are editors with zero constructive edits
or IP based vandals. Sadly.
Erik, yes, I consider Giving to Wiki as giving back to Society. Thanks
for the links. Time to read during my month long Wiki break.
Ravi, Bala told me that physical outreach programs had very poor
success rates. I concur with him.
Prad, I agree. That's how Manish and I became friends. But still
doesn't explain how to get new guys.

-- 
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Wikimedia India chapter IRC meetup

[Debanjan Bandyopadhyay]

Sorry, could not join. May someone please share the link to the summary??

-- 
Regards,
Debanjan*

- Lets make this world a better and more informative place

*
On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 9:00 PM, CherianTinu Abraham
wrote:

> A gentle reminder !
> Starting now.
>
> -Tinu Cherian
>
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Naveen Francis wrote:
>
>> Hi friends,
>>
>> We will have our IRC meetup on Dec 17, 2011, from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm
>>
>> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Dec_17,2011
>>
>> We from Wikimedia India Chapter invites you all to take part in the IRC
>> meetup.
>>
>>
>> On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
>> Thanks,
>> Naveen Francis
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Wikimedia
>> Chapter, India Member's Group.
>> To post to this group, send email to wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com
>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
>> wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
>> For more options, visit this group at
>> http://groups.google.com/group/wmin-members?hl=en?hl=en
>>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Wikimedia India chapter IRC meetup

[CherianTinu Abraham]

A gentle reminder !
Starting now.

-Tinu Cherian

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Naveen Francis  wrote:

> Hi friends,
>
> We will have our IRC meetup on Dec 17, 2011, from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm
>
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Dec_17,2011
>
> We from Wikimedia India Chapter invites you all to take part in the IRC
> meetup.
>
>
> On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
> Thanks,
> Naveen Francis
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Wikimedia
> Chapter, India Member's Group.
> To post to this group, send email to wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/wmin-members?hl=en?hl=en
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] mediawiki-uploader

[Philippe Beaudette]

This is really fantastic, and makes me very very happy.  This represents
the best of what makes the Wikimedia projects great - someone identifies a
need and then rolls up their sleeves and fills that need.  Well done,
Shrini, and thank you.

pb
___
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Head of Reader Relations
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

415-839-6885, x 6643

phili...@wikimedia.org



On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 5:10 AM, Shrinivasan T wrote:

> Friends.
>
> Tamil Wikipedia announced a Media Contest to increase the commons
> media files like photos, audio and video in the wikipedia world.
> see the announcement here.
> http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest/en
>
> To upload the photos there are two ways available so far.
>
> 1. The web based upload wizard
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard
>
> 2. Java based upload tool - Commonist
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Tools/Commonist
>
> We have to provide a detailed filename and description to the images
> for uploading.
>
> When we have a bunch of photos to upload, we have to select them,
> crop, or edit them before uploading.
>
> Found that that "GThumb Image Viewer" can show the files, edit the
> files and add IPTC tags to the images.
>
> We can view,edit,delete,rotate,crop and add the required Description
> and Title to the images
> for uploading to wikimedia commons.
>
> How to upload the files?
> There are two tools already.
> But, I wanted to plugin to any image viewer to upload to wikimedia
> commons directly.
> No image viewer has that plugin.
>
> DigiKam has it, but due to some issues, the mediawiki plugin is not
> released.
>
> So, I started to write my own script for uploading all the files in a
> folder to upload to mediawiki.
>
> Here is it.
> http://code.google.com/p/mediawiki-uploader/
>
> Usage details are available in INSTALL and README files.
>
> Thanks for the wikipedia users Surya and Sodabottle for their valuable
> suggestions.
>
> Please report if there are any issues.
>
> Provide your suggestions for improving too.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> T.Shrinivasan
>
>
> My Life with GNU/Linux : http://goinggnu.wordpress.com
> Free/Open Source Jobs : http://fossjobs.in
>
> Get CollabNet Subversion Edge : http://www.collab.net/svnedge
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] mediawiki-uploader

[Shrinivasan T]

did any one use gthumb and mediawiki-uploader?

do we need any further improvements?

please share your thoughts.
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Arjuna Rao Chavala]

Hi Shiju,

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:

> Dear All,
>
>
> --cut--
> I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
> discussions with a host of community members from across Indic language
> communities.  I have shared these for 12 languages 
> (Assamese,
> Hindi,
> Tamil,
> Telugu,
> Kannada,
> Nepali,
> Malayalam,
> Marathi,
> Odia,
> Sanskrit,
> Bengali,
> and 
> Gujarati
> .)
>

Thanks for the extensive work you have done in surveying the language
Wikipedias and sharing insights on key priorities.  I have browsed through
the reports and found them interesting.


> Community --cut--
>

What I found one of the key factor behind active communities particularly
Tamil and Malayalam, is the support of Government for the initiative.  This
could be a priority area for  other Wikipedias as well.

> Projects There is a constant debate of what should come first - article
> count or article quality?  I
> --cut--
>

When some of the language Wikipedias started to use the bots for creating
stub articles, they would have imagined the strengthening  of community  to
improve the same. But unfortunately, the community could not be
strengthened due to various issues like access to Internet. computing
platform, issues with rendering and input methods and we ended up with stub
articles remaining in the same state.

I agree that use of bots for example could have been limited to District/
Mandal(Taluk) headquarters  rather than covering all the villages in the
case of Telugu Wikipedia for example. If  appropriate stubs are created as
part of overall project with committed community members and a definite
time frame,  seeding of the pages with stubs could be useful.

> Readership --cut--
>
As internet penetration and mobile data access increase, we will get even
> more Indic readers.
>
 +1

I also want to try and identify potential areas of support that India
> Programs could work closely with communities on.  The idea is to support
> community across languages.  We would like to identify a very limited (1 or
> 2) pilots of a very controlled nature (in terms of scale) that we would
> like to collaboratively design with respective communities.  Given the
> efforts that will be required in any pilot (even if it is of a relatively
> small scale), we believe that there needs to be a certain basic level of
> community size and collaboration to be able handle such pilots.
>

Chapter has kicked off Language SIGs  for some of the languages.  I am sure
the language SIG chairs and the active language Wikipedians will be eager
to interact with you on the  next steps.


Best wishes
Arjuna Rao Chavala
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] What's in it for me?

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/12/17 Barry Newstead :
> I have limited experience, but in my travels in India, I think the greatest
> challenge is in basic awareness of how Wikipedia works.

That's true for the whole world. A particular problem for India is
that many people to whom i spoke, all of whom knew English, don't know
that
a. There's a Wikipedia in their language.
b. It is possible to read and write their language on the computer
*they already own*.

By creating technologies like Narayam and WebFonts the i18n team is
making Wikimedia projects more technically accessible to speakers of
these languages, but work is still needed to be done in raising
awareness. One of the ways to do it is to convince Indians who know
English to make the choice to contribute more to projects in languages
of India for the sake of the people who don't know English. I call
this "the software localization paradox": The situation today is that
in a technological project like ours people who know English are best
suited for building the groundwork for people who don't, but too
often, people who know English just contribute to English projects.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

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