CC-BY-SA; Creative Commons needs our support

The CC-BY-SA licenses are crucial to the Wikimedia movement. All but one of the Wikimedia Foundation projects are licensed with CC-BY-SA; Wikidata being the exception.

I find it astounding to learn that Creative Commons is in financial dire straits. As Wikimedians we are part of a world that is shaped by copyright law and the fight for free and fair license. When a crucial player like Creative Commons cannot take its role, it shows our weakness, It indicates that we are fighting a losing battle because our priorities are wrong.

Creative Commons deserves our support. We rely on Creative Commons.

It is one of those organisations that the WMF could do something special for. For instance a fund raiser on their behalf. <grin> WMF is good at that </grin> and in this way commit ourself more to free and fair licenses.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#SignWriting organisation adopts #CC-by-sa

The problem with "#Free content" is that some people do not appreciate its meaning. Free means: you can do whatever you like with this. The problem these people face is that they apply what their understanding of copyrights is and insist on a license.

Only for these people, the CC-by-sa license has been added. It is to make sure that it is understood that all the information is there to be used. It is to make sure that you can and are encouraged to make it your own and adapt it as you see fit.

For everyone else, there is no way where the SignWriting Foundation will enforce the legalities of the license. Yes, it is nice to be acknowledged but please do share SignWriting as widely as possible because it is a gift to be able to write the language you sign. You are *FREE* to write without any thought or any further consideration. Please do write your sign language.
Thanks,
       GerardM

#TED and an EUREKA moment for Open Content

Archimedes is one of the best known Greek scientists. People learn his principle in school and are often able to quote it for the rest of their life. When we write articles in Wikipedia, sources are considered to be important. This TED presentation reveals how little we actually know. How little or how badly we can refer to the past, how little we truly understand the relevance of even people like Archimedes.

When you have an interest in sources and in the preservation of knowledge, you will love this presentation. When you are looking for arguments why museums, archives, libraries should make their research, their digital scans available to the public under a free license, you should watch this presentation completely.

When you are involved in GLAM and Wikimedia projects, at the end of this presentation you may come to an understanding why it is so important to acknowledge the museums, the archives, the libraries for their work they do on the works we refer to.  Yes, much of what they conserve is out of copyright but they provide the provenance to much of our material past. A past that brings the original artefacts to where the digital manipulation / re-use takes off. It is where our digital world connects to the physical world. It is where the sharing of the sum of all knowledge has its origin, its sources.

These sources may provide us with even more knowledge as our ability to research objects increases. What we do not know is what material to value. The prayer book featured in this video was technically a "write off" and now provides us with a single source to works of ancient Greece we did not know about.
Thanks,
     GerardM

We love libraries and #Europeana and, they love us

European librarians have decided that the meta data on all books published in Europe will be made available under a CC-0 license through Europeana. The details can be found in this PDF.

Reading the text, makes it quite plain why Europe can be so wonderful. This is not only the librarians making a statement, it is the European commissioner Mrs Neelie Kroes who backs this up politcally.

As practically all books are published in Europe and as the Google book scanning project operates in Europe as well, it is not only English books that will find their meta data on Europeana.

My favourite quote from the PDF:

It will mean that Wikipedia can use the metadata, linking it to all sorts of articles....

Yes, we love Europeana, we would be thrilled to help the world find the way to the culture it promotes, our culture it promotes.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Good news from #Chile

Many tv networks bring the news that the miners who have been trapped are coming out from underground.

Freely licensed :)

It makes for moving stories, it makes for intrusive press attention and the Chilean government is doing a great job at telling the news and limiting the intrusion. There is one video camera, probably one photographer and all their work is shared with everyone who is interested.

Their work is available under a CC-by-sa license.

Other good Chilean news is hidden in a TED presentation about the earthquake in Haiti. The Chilean earthquake was 500 times stronger and the limited amount of deaths is attributed to construction methods that prevent damage.

Such good news exists because the Chileans make it happen.
Thanks,
        GerardM

#Copyright? Ok but what about copyresponsibility

The abuse of money caused copyright to be lengthened and strengthened. Abuse because negotiations are not held in public, abuse because marketeers and lobbyists pretend that a copyright violation is the same as theft. Abuse because this right is not balanced with responsibility.

The responsibility for those works that are excluded by a copyright from public use, should be with those who benefit from such exclusion. Identifying those who do is easy as they are these same industries that lobby for their "rights".

The industry is neither able nor willing to take up the responsibility to care for the cultural heritage that is not in the public domain. This right that is not tempered with responsibility will cause much to be lost. Organisations like the Library of Congress have raised the alarms repeatedly with little effect.

There is an increasing awareness that the artefacts of our modern culture need to be saved not only for us but also for future generations. Europeana is bringing many of the digitised collections of European GLAM together, it has sponsored the development of the Public Domain Calculators, it published a Public Domain Charter and it is a good and a positive document.

It however starts when copyrights ends. This has industry monetise and abuse our culture without taking its responsibilities. It is not strange why this industry and their politicians are loathed and despised.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Super heroes, capes are optional

Creative Commons has recognised some people as their superheroes. Recognising people for doing a good job is worthwhile particularly when they lead by example.

In this list of super heroes, Gautam John features, the story is impressive. The only question I am left with is how does he possibly find the time to be part of the board of the new Indian chapter??

In the Wikimedia movement there are the barn stars, but apart from that we do not bestow much recognition on people. In the tradition of the barn star, I have decided to award the "Old Gouda" wedge of appreciation. The tradition has it that I as a person can do this. I have a list of people who I consider to deserve some of the best Dutch cheese and I do welcome suggestions.

Gautam John is starting his Wikimedia career and, he is already a CC caped crusader. He will have to wait a bit and do more good to be considered for the big cheese.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#Google blocks use of #Wikimedia #Commons pictures

I want to write about a domain provider. In order to illustrate this I selected this picture from Wikimedia Commons. I get the message:

Uploading

-

Stop upload

Only select images for which you have confirmed that you have a licence for use.

I make a screen print in order to illustrate my blog post. I try to upload it and I get the message:

Uploading

-

Stop upload

Only select images for which you have confirmed that you have a licence for use.

The page on Commons about the picture is quite clear:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

I am equally sure that I am allowed to feature a screen shot using either the Chrome or the Firefox browser, if only because it is fair use.

Google, what are you thinking, are you intent on killing your blogger service ?
Thanks,
     GerardM

Approaches to mass digitisation in the Netherlands

I found this presentation on SlideShare by Paul Keller about mass digitisation in the Netherlands.  I want us  to cooperate with museums, libraries and archives, I want much of their material to be available on Commons. I love the idea that the cultural heritage of the Netherlands is digitised; it is one of the best ways of insuring that something is left when a disaster strikes.
 
My problem with the project presented by Paul is that it does not state what license will be used for the material that is digitised. This may be on purpose and I expect that it is, but the consequence is that nobody outside a narrow band of people can safely use it as a result. It may be that the CC-by-nc-sa is to be used, but as it does not say so explicitly it would be not safe for use by anyone. Wikipedia would not touch it because of the restriction imposed for the "non commercial" part.
Thanks,
       GerardM

PS it would make sense for all this digitised material to be stored somewhere high and dry ... above sea level :)

Task Tracking with Semantic MediaWiki

I blogged about the first day of an extension new to WMV Subversion that was localised at translationwiki.net. I found a presentation about Semantic Tasks from a year ago. It is staggering to find all these gems that make MediaWiki an insanely great platform.

Thanks,
GerardM

Task Tracking with Semantic MediaWiki

View more presentations from nyergler.

ar, de, dsb, fr, gl, gsw, hsb, ia, ja, ksh, lb, nl, oc, pl

A new extension "Semantic Tasks" became available. Now twenty four hours later, the localisation for fourteen languages has already been completed. In my opinion that is quite special.

Another thing I appreciate is that Semantic Tasks installs nicely in the Wikiation Extension Testing Environment. This is special for me because it is the first Semantic MediaWiki extension that just installs.

Semantic Tasks was developed for the CcTeamSpace is the internal task and project tracking system used at Creative Commons. All these things I learned today and in my opinion all this really demonstrates the relevance and the quality of the MediaWiki ecosystem.
Thanks,
       GerardM

Closed curtains

Yesterday, as part of the News Year event of three Dutch Open Content organisations, we had a guided tour of de Wallen, the famous red light district of Amsterdam. Even though the area is world famous, there is much more then meets the eye. Our guide was able to provide us with an astonishing wealth of details and, us being mostly Wikipedians we noticed the friezes in the classicist style, we wondered if next to the head of Zeus it was Hera where others had only eyes for the scantily clad ladies in the many windows. I must say they reminded me of a Patti Page song.

On a more serious note the relative merits of a red-light district were mentioned. With a decreased official tolerance for prostitution, more and more illegal brothels pop up all over the country. The girls are typically illegal and often forced in to prostitution.

At the end of the tour we made a group photo in front of a house with the curtains drawn. It is certain that Paul has an alibi as well, he took the picture ... :)
Thanks,
      GerardM

Amsterdam

Today the Wikimedia Vereniging Nederland and Creative Commons Nederland have their new year's do. The first part of the meeting will be about photos and making them available under a CC license. There will be a tour of Amsterdam, it will be fun.

In order to make the photos even more interesting, we have proposed to revisit the places where these historical pictures were taken. In the nineteenth century people did not travel in the same way as we do today. Publishers had photographers travel the world to bring the world closer to people by selling cards. Many of such cards ended up in archives like the Library of Congress.

Durova has promissed to restore at least two of these pictures when they get their modern equivalent. These old pictures are gorgeous, have a look at this picture of the Dam with Naatje still on it.

 

Thanks,

    GerardM