Dear all, I am forwarding some information about a topic that has been discussed in several places.
This is about the URAA, the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which renders some uploads on Wikimedia Commons to be copyright infringements. As the Commons community is quite strict about these they have decided to preventive delete all files affected. This lead to strong reactions, among other things an alternative Wikimedia Commons, hosted in a country with less strict copyright laws, was demanded. Wikimedia Israel was also quite frustrated by the fact that files were being deleted which have been explicitly opened by the government and the military. So they wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation board and was supported by Wikimedia Spain. The board of the Wikimedia Foundation has responded: * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Israel/Letter_to_the_BoT_regarding_URAA#Response_from_Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees In a short summary: 1) The WMF rejects the URAA and has already protested against the URAA in court together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and many other organizations but failed. 2) The WMF will not do any mass deletions based on the URAA as long as it doesn't receive DMCA takedown notices. Should this be the case only the infringed file will be deleted. So far no takedown notices have been received. Therefore the WMF recommends the communities to remain calm and refrain from preventive deletions. The WMF has published an analysis last year about the impact of the URAA which contains recommendations to the editors: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/URAA_Statement 3) The WMF thought about other server locations but has not found a solution. The US have many benefits but also disadvantages, such as the URAA. This is the case with any other potential locations. So far the current status. I am especially happy about item 2, hopefully the Commons community notices and accepts that. This is where I am doubtful. You can help with that by using the WMF statements in discussions and provide links. About the server location my (personal) opinion is that we could benefit from different jurisdictions and their different advantages. It is not so expensive to build a second Wikimedia Commons and the integration to the wikis is almost trivial. Regards, Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch _______________________________________________ http://wikimedia.ch Wikimedia CH website Wikimediach-l mailing list https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediach-l
