Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia
Hi Ting, It's lovely to see such operatic vision! And I for one would love to see some of those things happen. But, just to bring it down a bit; the technological issues rear their ugly heads. Engineering-wise, hosting Wikipedia is a tough problem. Distributing Wikimedia hosting across the globe is very definitely a hard problem. If it could even be considered in a 5 year project scope that would be IMO an aggressive timescale :) Also, I am not sure the WMF has attitude for decentralisation to chapters; nota bene the work relating to Labs and Toolserver. So commercially that might be a tough sell. However, despite this, I hope enough people see something in your vision to push forward change. Tom On 7 April 2014 14:39, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Hello dear all, From 2008 on until recently the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) had seen a staggering growth to fulfill its mission, and it had pulled a great deal of the resources, in money, but as well as in talent, manpower and volunteer's effort of the movement. From the beginning hosting of the Wikimedia projects was the core competency of the WMF. A big part of the WMF budget and staff is dedicated to the operation of the servers. Meanwhile the main server farm is moved from Tampa, Florida to Ashburn, Virginia. In the last years the WMF had evolved to the main development party of the MediaWiki software. The software and product development had drawn many resources and talents from around the world to San Francisco. Many developers were relocated to join the WMF team. With the increased prominence of especially Wikipedia the WMF and its projects were facing more and more legal challenges in the past years. Law suits from around the world were reported since 2005. Because of this the WMF had expanded its legal team. To improve its role as the leader of the movement and to settle the disputes between the WMF and chapters about the processing and distribution of the funding the WMF had evolved since 2010 into a grant making organization. All in all the WMF is without doubt the center peace of the movement and claims four fifth of the expanses of the entire movement. The recent dispute about the URAA motivated massive content deletions on Wikimedia Commons highlights the problem of this strong centralized approach. In basic, the storage solution of the Wikimedia projects is still a very classical approach with two central database centers, both of them located in the US. This approach had repeatedly induced conflicts about what content can be stored and what cannot. It does not reflect the international character of the projects and had repeatedly induced critics on the Wikimedia projects to be US biased and it is, measured on today's storage technology, outdated. Even though currently the US law is one of the most liberal in relation to freedom of speech it does has its bias. The US copy right law for example is meanwhile one of the most restrictive and backward looking copy right laws in the entire world. Another example of the potential hazardous result of this approach are the image files that are currently stored in the individual projects. For example on Chinese Wikipedia images that are free according to the Chinese and Taiwanese copy right laws are stored directly there, and not on Commons. These images are nevertheless not free according to the US law and are stored in servers that are located in the US and distributed from there. This poses potential problems for all parties that are involved here: for the Foundation, for the project, for the community that is curating these images and for the users that are using these images. In a larger sense the problem is not constrained to the file repositories, but also to the content. Even though the Foundation had increased its legal department and had tentatively tried to work out an approach to support its community in legal conflict basically it is still working with the old strategy: In case there is a legal case in a foreign country the Foundation will avoid the call of the court while the Chapter will deny any responsibility for the content. This leaves in the end all potential hazards to the volunteer who contributed the content. In case of a court suit he is probably the one that have the worse legal support and had to take the charge privately, even if he handled legally and in good will. In my opinion, since the technology is ripe, it is time for the movement as a whole and WMF especially to seriously consider the approach of a distributed hosting. Files and contents that let's say are legal in the EU but not in the US should be able to be stored on a server located in the EU and distributed and operated from there. Files and contents that are legal in PRC and Taiwan and may violate copy right law in the US should be able to be stored in a server say in Taiwan or Hongkong and be distributed from there
Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia
(Note this reply is entirely in my personal capacity, and does not in any way represent anything at all official) On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Files and contents that let's say are legal in the EU but not in the US should of the be able to be stored on a server located in the EU and distributed and operated from there. Files and contents that are legal in PRC and Taiwan and may violate copy right law in the US should be able to be stored in a server say in Taiwan or Hongkong and be distributed from there into the world. This approach is meanwhile technical viable and is used by almost all major international internet providers today. As I recall, the problem with this suggestion is that it wouldn't actually work that way. For material that's illegal in the US but legal in the EU, the US branch would be sued despite the material being hosted in the EU. And similarly, for something legal in the US but not legal in the EU, the EU branch would be sued. The end result would be that everyone everywhere would have to comply with the *most* restrictive laws, not the least. And if it did work, the individual contributors would still probably have to watch out for liability. Or is the idea here to have Wikipedia be run by a large number of different legal entities? I don't have any idea of how that might work to do more than guess that the necessary legal structure (if it's even possible) would result in something hugely complex. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia
This is very interesting Ting just to reply to one (fairly minor!) part re:
WMUK WMDE strategy, I agree further sharing and coordination would be a
good thing (indeed, we did try to look to other chapters/organisations for
guidance) but I also think thinking about localisation of strategy is
important, and within the spirit of distribution. Im hoping we can discuss
both of these aspects - co-ordination, and localisation - at wmcon in
Berlin this week and would welcome thoughts on this element (on a new
thread probably).
Best
Simon
On 7 Apr 2014 16:49, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Ting,
Thank you for sharing your view. It is interesting in many aspects,
and I think that I support its spirit but I feel obliged to add a
couple of points.
2014-04-07 15:39 GMT+02:00 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
[...]
Even though the Foundation had increased its legal
department and had tentatively tried to work out an approach to support
its
community in legal conflict basically it is still working with the old
strategy: In case there is a legal case in a foreign country the
Foundation
will avoid the call of the court while the Chapter will deny any
responsibility for the content. This leaves in the end all potential
hazards
to the volunteer who contributed the content. In case of a court suit he
is
probably the one that have the worse legal support and had to take the
charge privately, even if he handled legally and in good will.
I can confirm that, this is precisely what Wikimedia italia is doing
right now (and rightly so) for the infamous 20 million EURO lawsuit[1]
you should already know about. Plus, the fact that we do not have any
responsibility over the projects nor we want to intervene or
manage them is in our bylaws[2] too.
It is worth adding that following the law and jurisprudence in Italy
(but mind that IANAL) the mere possession of servers can be enough for
an Italian judge to consider you responsible of the contents. That's
why Wikimedia Italia does not want any server.
Moreover, the association itself is not a legal person and its rights
and duties are exercised in the person of his legal representative,
that is the chair (in Italian, presidente) So in the aforementioned
case the lawsuit is on the shoulders and head of Frieda herself (which
was the chair and legal representative at the time).
You can imagine that in no way we can think that a single person
accepts this kind of burden (I mean, we have already received a 20M EURO
lawsuit and we don't even have any servers!).
[...]
This also means that the chapters, as far as there is one, should be
able to
take the responsibility for the content and the hosting of those servers
in
their country. They should be obliged to provide legal consultation and
defense to the community, which means a distribution of the legal defense
from a central point into the world, to the chapters and directly to the
communities. Indeed the legal consultation and protection of the
community
is in my opinion one of the most missed duty of the chapters and the
Foundation to the movement.
Well, Wikimedia Italia is providing assistance to Frieda since day 1,
of course. it is also worth mentioning that the case should reach its
end sometimes this year (it needed only 5 years)
Cristian
(speaking in my personal capacity)
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_50#Wikimedia_Italia_in_trouble
[2] {{it}} http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Statuto
These are probably outdated:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/bylaws
We have modified our bylaws in 2009 to become a registered non-profit:
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia
On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 10:49 AM, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) bjor...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Files and contents that let's say are legal in the EU but not in the US should of the be able to be stored on a server located in the EU and distributed and operated from there. Files and contents that are legal in PRC and Taiwan and may violate copy right law in the US should be able to be stored in a server say in Taiwan or Hongkong and be distributed from there into the world. This approach is meanwhile technical viable and is used by almost all major international internet providers today. As I recall, the problem with this suggestion is that it wouldn't actually work that way. Something like this could work. For material that's illegal in the US but legal in the EU, MediaWiki could be designed to more flexibly look for material from multiple sources. This can be host-neutral. the US branch would be sued despite the material being hosted in the EU. if it did work, the individual contributors would still probably have to watch out for liability. There are problems to overcome. As we have seen, people are sometimes sued even where there is no legal case against them. And sometimes the Internet itself is challenged, ISPs are pressured to change their policies, over content issues. But if you live in a country where a file is legal to copy and share online, and you copy it to a server/website in that country while correctly indicating its (c) status, it is difficult to find fault with that. How these local websites interact with one another, or with international requests for geo-blocking, or with client readers and international websites that help aggregate their contents, is a trickier question. A properly designed distributed system could go a long way towards addressing some of the issues noted above. And in the long run this would make the projects more robust against certain attacks that (even with multiple server farms) we are currently vulnerable to. Thanks, Ting, for starting this thread. SJ ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia
Why not? Peter - Original Message - From: Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 3:39 PM Subject: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia Hello dear all, From 2008 on until recently the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) had seen a staggering growth to fulfill its mission, and it had pulled a great deal of the resources, in money, but as well as in talent, manpower and volunteer's effort of the movement. From the beginning hosting of the Wikimedia projects was the core competency of the WMF. A big part of the WMF budget and staff is dedicated to the operation of the servers. Meanwhile the main server farm is moved from Tampa, Florida to Ashburn, Virginia. In the last years the WMF had evolved to the main development party of the MediaWiki software. The software and product development had drawn many resources and talents from around the world to San Francisco. Many developers were relocated to join the WMF team. With the increased prominence of especially Wikipedia the WMF and its projects were facing more and more legal challenges in the past years. Law suits from around the world were reported since 2005. Because of this the WMF had expanded its legal team. To improve its role as the leader of the movement and to settle the disputes between the WMF and chapters about the processing and distribution of the funding the WMF had evolved since 2010 into a grant making organization. All in all the WMF is without doubt the center peace of the movement and claims four fifth of the expanses of the entire movement. The recent dispute about the URAA motivated massive content deletions on Wikimedia Commons highlights the problem of this strong centralized approach. In basic, the storage solution of the Wikimedia projects is still a very classical approach with two central database centers, both of them located in the US. This approach had repeatedly induced conflicts about what content can be stored and what cannot. It does not reflect the international character of the projects and had repeatedly induced critics on the Wikimedia projects to be US biased and it is, measured on today's storage technology, outdated. Even though currently the US law is one of the most liberal in relation to freedom of speech it does has its bias. The US copy right law for example is meanwhile one of the most restrictive and backward looking copy right laws in the entire world. Another example of the potential hazardous result of this approach are the image files that are currently stored in the individual projects. For example on Chinese Wikipedia images that are free according to the Chinese and Taiwanese copy right laws are stored directly there, and not on Commons. These images are nevertheless not free according to the US law and are stored in servers that are located in the US and distributed from there. This poses potential problems for all parties that are involved here: for the Foundation, for the project, for the community that is curating these images and for the users that are using these images. In a larger sense the problem is not constrained to the file repositories, but also to the content. Even though the Foundation had increased its legal department and had tentatively tried to work out an approach to support its community in legal conflict basically it is still working with the old strategy: In case there is a legal case in a foreign country the Foundation will avoid the call of the court while the Chapter will deny any responsibility for the content. This leaves in the end all potential hazards to the volunteer who contributed the content. In case of a court suit he is probably the one that have the worse legal support and had to take the charge privately, even if he handled legally and in good will. In my opinion, since the technology is ripe, it is time for the movement as a whole and WMF especially to seriously consider the approach of a distributed hosting. Files and contents that let's say are legal in the EU but not in the US should be able to be stored on a server located in the EU and distributed and operated from there. Files and contents that are legal in PRC and Taiwan and may violate copy right law in the US should be able to be stored in a server say in Taiwan or Hongkong and be distributed from there into the world. This approach is meanwhile technical viable and is used by almost all major international internet providers today. This also means that the chapters, as far as there is one, should be able to take the responsibility for the content and the hosting of those servers in their country. They should be obliged to provide legal consultation and defense to the community, which means a distribution of the legal defense from a central point into the world, to the chapters and directly to the communities. Indeed the legal
