Wikimedia Foundation elections/2024/Questions for candidates/Question 3
In the 2024-25 draft Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan, there is a statement that Wikimedia content is becoming less visible as part of the Internet's essential infrastructure, because an increasingly closed and artificial intelligence-mediated internet doesn't attribute the source of the facts, or even link back to the Wikimedia projects. What responsibility does the Board and the Wikimedia Foundation have in enforcing the CC-by-SA licensing of the content from all projects by AI or other digital media information formats that do not respect the copyright law?
Bobby Shabangu (Bobbyshabangu)
No response yet.
Deon Steyn (Oesjaar)
No response yet.
Erik Hanberg (Erikemery)
In general, I believe the board should be proactive in its enforcement of copyright law for its content. The Creative Commons license is not a giveaway.
Unfortunately, when it comes to AI in particular, my understanding of the legal and copyright questions posed by chatbots and such is that winning a lawsuit on these grounds is not certain. The law has not caught up to the technology. And a court decision that goes the wrong way might be a blow. In that regard, some strategic patience may be required, as the WMF seeks favorable conditions for a legal strategy. But, again I believe the board should actively defend its legal copyright claim where it can and where it has a likelihood of success.
Farah Jack Mustaklem (Fjmustak)
No response yet.
Christel Steigenberger (Kritzolina)
Yes, we see a world that doesn’t respect the way we want to share our knowledge. Often it diminishes our efforts as volunteers by not giving credit where credit is due. And I think this is a problem that goes beyond the scope of this question. Licenses are only a small part of the issue. On this topic I see a clear responsibility of the Board to act in its core capacity of developing strategies on how to tackle problems volunteers face. The Wikimedia Foundation has the responsibility to research and monitor the situation (it already does, this is why we see these issues listed) and to act on the strategies the Board, I am confident, is already working on.
Lane Rasberry (Bluerasberry)
Our community of content creators develops open media. We generously and freely share this media, but there are many corporations with bad intent who capture the content, conspire to make it closed, then convert our free access into their paid product. This is a known problem that affects more than just Wikimedia content, and it is bigger than just the Wikimedia platform. When corporations abuse the system, they are following copyright law, because they are large enough to control governments and write the laws. It may be legal, but at least the Wikimedia Foundation can support the user community in telling the world that corporate capture of the commons is unethical.
To solve the problem of enforcing Creative Commons licenses, I would like to propose a more formal multiyear partnership with the Creative Commons organization. Wikimedia and Creative Commons are interdependent on each other, and if we want expertise with their licenses, then it would be less expensive and more sensible to fund their advocacy instead of duplicating their efforts with Wikimedia Foundation staff. Their budget was US$4 million in 2022 compared to $180 million for the Wikimedia Foundation. Because we need them, and because of the difference in money power, it is appropriate for us to share something.
There have been Wikimedia community complaints that the Wikimedia Foundation endlessly grows its own staff bureaucracy. I do not support wild growth of the Wikimedia Foundation, but our donors give because they trust us to protect the world. Part of our protection should be sharing money with movement partners, and Creative Commons is one of those.
Besides Creative Commons I think we should commit multi-year grants to other smaller allied organizations who support our mission, including Internet Archive who maintains our links to deleted websites; OpenStreetMap who manages our maps and who are experiencing corporate capture of their open data and user content community; Flickr Foundation which has provided so much image support to Wikimedia Commons; and the Tor Project which provides essential online privacy services in the media environment.
There is no hope of the Wikimedia Foundation alone resisting corporations. As the biggest and best funded nonprofit steward of an online community, the Wikimedia Foundation can find success in bringing all the smaller more vulnerable communities together.
Lorenzo Losa (Laurentius)
No response yet.
Maciej Artur Nadzikiewicz (Nadzik)
No response yet.
Mohammed Awal Alhassan (Alhassan Mohammed Awal)
No response yet.
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (Rosiestep)
No response yet.
Tesleemah Abdulkareem (Tesleemah)
No response yet.
Victoria Doronina (Victoria)
This is an excellent question. So far, WMF's approach to entities that use our content for commercial purposes, such as Google, has been to ask for some charity politely. As a result, WMF has a productive collaboration with Google, which prominently displays Wikipedia articles in the right panel of the search results. It has also become a multi-year paying client of Wikimedia Enterprise, which is one of the sources of the diversified WMF income.
As far as I know (and I was wrong before), there’s no ongoing relationship with companies that create AIs. Meanwhile, some US newspapers negotiated to sell their content for AI training to these companies. However, they did it via lawsuits, and what is acceptable and expected from for-profit companies can do more damage than bring gain for a charity such as WMF—and we don’t have millions to spend on lawsuits with an uncertain outcome.
I think the Board should encourage the CEO to explore possible mutually beneficial models of interactions with AI companies. If I am reelected, I can start exploring this question.