Friends, it took me a month to join forces and get the courage to write the story below.
The Wiki Education Brazil user group has had its website [1] shutted down due to an attack using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the most shocking of this story is that the legal threat was made by a "member" of the Wikimedia community: Mr. João Alexandre Peschanski, who uses the username Joalpe. My unreal saga began on October 7th when I received an email informing me that the WMF Support and Safety team had received a complaint from Joalpe that his copyright was being violated by the publication on the I CCBWIKI (I Brazilian Scientific Congress of Wikipedia) website of a paper which he is a co-author. I thought this situation was very strange and I imagined it was a misunderstanding. I promptly in good faith emailed Joalpe, copying WMF team, trying to figure out what could have led to this misleading interpretation that we were committing a copyright infringement. In the email I reminded him that he knows several members of the Wiki Edu Brazil group and that he could communicate directly with us if he was bothered with something and that, if he wanted to, I could remove from the site the work of which he is a co-author, even though it is on the CC-BY 3.0 license. To my surprise I never received a reply from Joalpe. Instead, two days after my contact arrives a message from GoDaddy (company where the Wiki Edu Brasil’s site is hosted in the United States) informing that we have received a "complete DMCA complaint", made by the Center for Research, Innovation and Diffusion in Neuromamatics of the University of São Paulo (CEPID NeuroMat - USP), signed by João Alexandre Peschanski. In this complaint he alleges that in the page that I made with the texts sent to the I CCBWIKI there would be a text of which he is one of the authors and that he would have revoked our authorization to publish it, accuses us of not giving the due credits in the work and implies that we would have copied the content from another conference, prior to CCBWIKI, where it would have been originally published. I lack words to describe my revolt at such absurd lies. First: not only was the authorization not revoked but also a Creative Commons publication could not have its permission revoked for sharing. Secondly, in fact his name did not appear on the page listing the papers, because the main author of the article did not register it correctly in the system, but when clicking on the file his name was in the credits correctly. Third: the published content was exactly the one sent by the author David Fernando Levon Alves on August 29, 2016, and until the current unfortunate legal threat I did not even know of the existence of Intercom conference, where I now know that the same paper had been presented in September 9th. And Joalpe knows all about it! Even on page that he links[2] in his complaint saying that is proof of him having revoked our authorization for publication, he clearly says that he disallows the publication of the paper his is the main author, and that he would talk to the other author to propose withdrawing the paper in question, and the chair of the event promptly replied indicating that the dialogue should continue through the conference management system (it is worth noting that he said he would like to withdraw his work because he has never seen an academic conference that does not pay for the transfer and accommodations for all, an argument that does not make any sense to anyone that minimally knows the reality of Brazilian academy). Still bewildered by this nonsense I had to decide what to do. The DMCA notice gave us two options: either to remove the illegally posted file or to contest the complaint. Thinking about justice, we would obviously opt for the second option because we were not doing anything illegal. But within the cruel logic of the DMCA, we were given an absurd 24-hour deadline to send a response and our page was already off. It is worth mentioning that at that moment our host removed all the pages in the domain wikibrasil.org, and not just the page with the annals of the previous conference. In this way, projects such as IWSC and WLM that were in key moments of their execution were also unavailable to users. So, to the very annoyance we had to remove the file (as if we were guilty!) In order to request that the sites be republished. Yet stunned by this, I asked for help from the WMF’s Trust & Safety and the Legal Team. Both were sympathetic, but the WMF's legal support policies provide support only for problems regarding content hosted on the foundation's servers, and since that was not the case, I could not receive formal legal support. Unsure, fearing the possible legal implications of the complaint, and without knowing how to defend myself I spoke with groups of free culture and defense of freedom of expression and concluded that the best way to defend myself would be to publicize the ongoing persecution. The days that followed were very difficult for me. Whenever I had to deal with any wiki subject I was taken by a feeling of revolt and could not do anything. I spent hours trying to write these words but I just couldn’t do it. Having to face a legal threat through the DMCA may already be something to wrap the stomach itself, but having to do it knowing that who denounces know he is lying, says himself a defender of free culture and is even a member of the Wikimedia community is unbelievably revolting! We all know that wikis communities are not a bed of roses and I have several times left and I stopped editing because of the bullying done by users like him. But this time I won’t shut up! The destructive behavior of this person has escalated in a way that is forcing me to spend all my time studying United States copyright law to defend myself from something I did not do, and he knows it well. This user used his influence to move the largest university in Latin America into an international legal threat against the movement he claims to be a part of. We need to stop it! For those who do not know this user, it is worth pointing out that he leads a users group, and receives funding from WMF to conduct outreach activities. I repeat: This person who uses the DMCA to legally threaten members of the Wikimedia community is receiving money from our movement to fund their projects. We can not accept this anymore! Joao Alexandre Peschanski (a.k.a. Joalpe) should be boycotted in every possible way by the Wikimedia movement. A copyright troll should never receive grants, be accepted in our spaces and have the right to speak on behalf of our community! In addition to measures within the Wikimedia community I also ask for your support to help with my defense of Joalpe's attack on the legal world. I call upon all advocates of free culture, freedom of knowledge and the Wikimedia movement to endorse the following petition [3], addressed to the University of São Paulo, demanding that it immediately withdraw the complaint of violation to the DMCA made against the Wiki Educação Brasil group, and that it immediately stops pursuing free-culture movements in Brazil and in the world: https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justiça-americana-para-tirar-site-wiki-brasil-do-ar <https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justi> I publish this letter still frightened, but already without fear and confident that united we will overcome one more attack that threatens not only the Wikimedia movement, but the whole culture of free knowledge. "Imagine a world in which every person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That is what we are doing." Jimbo Wales Sincerely, Henrique de Andrade (User: HenriqueCrang) [1] http://wikibrasil.org [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki_Education_Brazil/Events/Congresso_Científico_Brasileiro_da_Wikipédia/2016#Tr.C3.AAs_d.C3.BAvidas <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiki_Education_Brazil/Events/Congresso_Cient> [3] https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justiça-americana-para-tirar-site-wiki-brasil-do-ar <https://www.change.org/p/reitor-da-usp-pare-imediatamente-de-usar-a-justi> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
