Announcements/July-2011-Chapter-Update

Date: 19 Aug 2011

Dear Wikimedia India Members and Community,

The highlights of Chapter Update for July 2011 are given below.

Membership update
The membership stands at 67 as on 7 Aug 2011. Few analytics of the data are given below. Male membership is at 55 corresponding to 82% and  Female membership is at 12 corresponding to 18%. Maharashtra accounted for largest number of members at 26 followed by Karnataka at 20 and Kerala at 8. Industry members are the highest at 23 followed by Student at 17 and Academia at 9. Others category has 18. English at 54 corresponding to 90% stands first followed by Malayalam 11 and Hindi 6.
 * Gender
 * Geographic location
 * Vocation
 * Preferred language as Editor

City/Language SIG

 * City/language subcommittee formation call (for members only) did not receive a good response. Mumbai and Sanskrit communities showed some interest and had  proposals for respective Chairs.
 * Chapter would like to clarify that SIGs are critical to promote wiki projects in their respective  areas. SIG Chairs would work closely with Chapter EC in getting  necessary support for the activities and they are expected to play a key  role in india wide events like Wiki Conference India. As the membership  base is low currently as per the analysis in the previous section,  there could be some issues in forming a group of members interested in  SIG, but we do hope that these SIGs  will be strengthened in due course.  Aditional clarity on role and responsibility will emerge as we work  with these groups.  Chapter encourages members to associate with one or  more SIGs.

EC Elections
A committee called Nominations Committee consisting of Achal Prabhala, BalaSundara Raman  Lakshmanan and Pradeep Mohandas is appointed  to conduct  EC elections. More details on the process and dates will be communicated shortly by them.

Events
Wikimedia Chapter organised its first public event on 30 July 2011. The title of the event was  Copyright and open licensing seminar. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Pranesh  Prakash and Dhanish covered the entire breadth and  depth of Copyrights  and licensing aspects.

Sudhir explained the abstracted   Copyright  as a way to regulate  information flow. Reproduction of content without attribution is called  as plagiarism. In academic world, reproduction of 5 word or more in  sequence without acknowledgement of  the original source will be termed  plagiarism. In open communities like Wikimedia projects, social form of  preventing plagiarism is practised. He highlighted that Art instruction rests on copying. To a question on  whether Census map reuse in Wikimedia projects will violate copyright,   he clarified that Copyright applies to works created by Government   agencies, hence it is better to get approval from the relevant   authorities. He shared his experience of how government denied  reproduction of NSSO data after extensive analytics. He clarified that the material released by Press information or public  relations  department can be reproduced for journalistic purpose, but it  does not  mean that the material has become free of copyright.

Pranesh  explained that Copyright originated when there was a need to control   printed documents, but was expanded to included any content on any media   subsequently. Copyright exceptions are provided to Libraries. He said  copyrights are not infringed as per  US Copyright act, when the  material  is copied for private study/use including  research/criticism/review. He said that even Gazette of GOI is  copyrighted and not availble  electronically for public. He shared that Government authorities were  planning to make the Gazette available  electonically soon. He shared that with the availability of e-books,  Libraries are also given special  and limited licenses of copying when  they lend the books to their  customers (Harper Collins gives license to  allow 27 copies). If the number of copies are used, library has to  obtain additional licenses  from the vendor as the material is DRM  protected. He expressed his disappointment that GOI is planning to  amend the copyright of  photographs to the same terms as books  in terms  of aligning with WIPO  expectations, although  the move will not be  beneficial for society at  large.

Dhanish explained how creative commons allows the authors to license  their works as  desired. So instead of "All rights reserved", it becomes "Some rights  reserved". Wikimedia projects follow CC-BY-SA along with GFDL license  for the content.

Chapter thanks Centre for Internet and Society for sponsoring this event.

Look forward to your continued support

Best,

On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter EC Arjuna Rao Chavala President