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Wikimedia Highlights, February 2016

Here are the highlights from the Wikimedia blog in February 2016.

Contents

Recording romanticism and filling Wikimedia Commons with 19th century music

Wasei Dúo en MR 02.jpg

Photo by Rubén Ojeda, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Wikimedia Spain collaborated with the country’s Museum of Romanticism to put on a series of classical music concerts for the Wikimedia Commons. The results are available now, free for anyone to use. The chapter invites all musicians to collaborate on Wikimedia projects and help disseminate free art and culture.

What’s TPP? The problematic partnership

THE BATTLE OF COPYRIGHT.jpg

Photo by Christopher Dombres, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Wikipedia and its power for the creation and sharing of free knowledge are directly driven by a strong and healthy public domain. Unfortunately, TPP would extend copyright terms at a minimum of the author’s life plus 70 years, eating into the public domain. This cements a lengthy copyright term in countries where it already exists like Australia, the US, and Chile.

TPP is a problematic treaty because it harms the public domain and our ability to create and share free knowledge. It is time for countries to partner for the policies and projects that benefit everyone, like the public domain, clear copyright exceptions and intermediaries empowered to stay out of content creation with good safe harbor protections.

#BlackLifeMatters edit-a-thon bolsters Wikipedia’s coverage of black history

File:BlackLifeMatters Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Harlem, New York City, February 6, 2016.webm

Dozens of black history articles were created or improved at the #AfroCROWD Wikipedia editathon in Harlem. You can watch the video here, on Youtube, or Vimeo. Video by Victor Grigas, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dozens of black history articles were created or improved at the #AfroCROWD Wikipedia editathon in Harlem, New York City. Building on events held this year and last, the event helped fill gaps in the English Wikipedia’s coverage, including on Edward Augustine Savoy.

In brief

Appeal filed in Wikimedia v. NSA: The case was dismissed on the grounds of standing, an important legal concept that refers to whether or not someone has the right to bring their claim in court. In our appeal, we detail how and why the Wikimedia Foundation and its eight co-plaintiffs have amply demonstrated that we have standing in this case.
Wiki Loves Africa brings the continent’s fashion to the world: Held in October of November of last year, the Wiki Loves Africa photo competition focused on the continent’s varied fashion traditions from north, south, east, and west. The winners came from all over the continent—Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, and Algeria. In total, 7,453 images were entered by 734 unique contributors from 51 countries around the world.
More striking photos from the European Science Photo Competition: The 2015 European Science Photo Competition saw 9793 files uploaded from 2201 authors from 40 countries. Naturally, many of them didn’t make it into the final, but there were lot of great shots besides the 328 submissions (384 separate images) that went on to compete for first place.

Andrew Sherman, Digital Communications Intern, Wikimedia Foundation

Related

Read further in the pursuit of knowledge

Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA: Why we’re here and where we’re going

The Wikimedia Foundation’s mission is to support the communities of readers and contributors who share and consume information on Wikipedia and the other free-knowledge projects. Privacy and anonymity are crucial to the free sharing of knowledge. Mass surveillance erodes our privacy and individualism, and undermines our expressive and associational freedoms.

Read more

Discussing fake news and the NSA lawsuit at Yale

As part of our ongoing affiliation and collaboration with Yale Law School, members of the Foundation’s legal team recently participated in two events focused on the issue of fake news and the Wikimedia v. NSA lawsuit.

Read more

Victory at the Fourth Circuit: Court of Appeals allows Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA to proceed

The decision marks an important victory for the privacy and free expression rights of Wikimedia users.

Read more

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