[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA

Fri Jan 13 14:22:50 UTC 2012

Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com> writes:

> We have never proposed Wikimedia Commons as a storage service for
> GLAMs. We have always said they should have their own catalogue and
> share copies of their multimedia with us (and everyone else) under a
> free license. That gives provenance and verifiability. We are not a
> replacement for publicly funded cultural organisations investing in
> their own infrastructure.

Fair enough.  But is it really the case that most of the GLAMs are 
just providing copies?  Just wondering.

> Temporarily disabling access in protest is not the same as "blocking
> my contents without warning me" - that's actually a closer definition
> to what SOPA would enable if it were passed. Furthermore, AFAICT, it
> would be equally applicable to Wikimedia Commons, or Flickr or
> YouTube or any other place where they might choose to upload/share
> their content...

I still expect some of them to react in a way that will make them think
twice before participating to an upload project.  But maybe that's just
me being pessimistic.

-- 
 Bastien