Wikimedia Canada/Petition

Public domain

The US government releases much of what they produce into the public domain. We in Canada should be doing the same. We paid for it so why should it not belong to all of us?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Political activity by a charitable organization

While we will have to limit political activity some is allow per

Political activities

A registered charity cannot be created for a political purpose and cannot be involved in partisan political activities. A political activity is considered partisan if it involves direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, a political party or candidate for public office.

However, a registered charity may take part in limited political activities if they are non-partisan and connected and subordinate to the charity's purposes. A connected activity relates to and supports a charity's purposes and represents a reasonable way to achieve them. A subordinate activity is subservient to a charity's dominant charitable purpose or is a minor focus of the charity.

An activity is considered to be political if it:

* encourages the public to contact elected representatives or public officials to urge them to retain, oppose, or change any law, policy, or decision in any jurisdiction; * communicates to the public that the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in any jurisdiction should be retained, opposed, or changed; * attempts to incite or organize the public to put pressure on elected representatives or public officials to retain, oppose, or change any law, policy, or decision of any level of government in any jurisdiction; or * attempts to sway public opinion on social issues.

A registered charity can devote part of its resources to political activities provided substantially all of its resources are devoted to charitable activities. As a general rule, we consider a charity that devotes no more than 10% of its total resources a year to political activities to be operating within the substantially all requirement.

However, we recognize that this administrative guideline may have a negative impact on smaller charities. Therefore, the following thresholds will apply:

* Registered charities with less than $50,000 annual income in the previous year can devote up to 20% of their resources to political activities in the current year.

[1]

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

• • Comment A good deal of those are already public domain, i.e. if over 50 years old, though there are some disputes as to if the US 100-year copyright rule applies nonetheless. Some images from S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia we might see fair use status for, i.e. as they've already been released/OK'd for use in other web resources, such as http://bivouac.com.Skookum1

Interesting work by other groups

"A "Wikimedia Panel" (summary on the conference blog) focused on efforts in several countries to make government works available under a free license. The panel was moderated by Mathias Schindler from the German Wikimedia chapter, who has been involved in such efforts, including negotiations that resulted in a donation of around 100,000 images from the German Federal Archive (see Signpost coverage). At the panel, Tomer Ashur from Wikimedia Israel reported on the chapter's progress in lobbying for a law that would release government works under a free license that includes permission for commercial reuse (earlier Signpost coverage: Rumble in the Knesset, Israeli "Wikipedia bill"). He expressed cautious optimism that the chapter will be able to announce the passing of the law at Wikimania 2011 (which is to be held in Haifa, Israel)."[2] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)