Technology Law and Policy Fellow at Wikimedia

Published
February 23, 2018
Location
San Francisco, CA
Category
Job Type

Description

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Technology Law and Policy Fellow to support its Legal Team in advancing laws and public policy that promotes free knowledge.

The Technology Law and Policy Fellow position is designed for a lawyer or other individual who typically has up to 2 years of legal or public policy experience and is passionate about free knowledge and open source issues. This position provides an immersive in-house experience with specific education and training in the areas of Internet regulation and technology law and the operations of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF, the not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the creation and sharing of free knowledge and maintaining Wikipedia and its sister projects).

This position will report to a Wikimedia Foundation staff attorney and will be based in San Francisco.

We’d like you to do these things:   

  • Work individually and in teams under the supervision of Wikimedia Foundation lawyers to advise the Foundation on new and developing legal and public policy issues.
  • Research and offer guidance to the Foundation on developing areas of law and policy including copyright, patent, trademark, privacy, free speech, intermediary liability, access to knowledge, international conflict of laws, and free content licensing.
  • Manage and administer several ongoing projects under the supervision of the Foundation legal team.
  • Assist the Legal Team in its efforts to monitor global developments in public policy that may affect free knowledge.
  • Work cross-departmentally with colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation to resolve legal questions, provide counsel on legal issues, and develop and communicate the Foundation’s positions towards public policy issues.
  • Participate in lobbying efforts in the U.S.or abroad on behalf of legislation and regulation that support a free and accessible internet and defends content under a free license or in the public domain.

We’d like you to have these skills:

  • Experience related to the Wikimedia Foundation's free knowledge mission, including in areas such as free culture issues, public policy advocacy relating to law and technology, Creative Commons licensing, or similar.
  • The ability to excel in a fast-paced, multitasking environment that demands fast turn-around.
  • Fluency communicating complex topics in English both clearly and succinctly, in writing and orally, to expert and non-expert audiences alike.
  • Intellectual curiosity and flexibility that allows them to tackle complex problems in creative ways.
  • Experience working with online user communities (experience with wikis or Wikimedia projects is preferred).
  • The ability to flourish in a highly transparent and collaborative environment and work on a team with diverse demographic and cultural characteristics.
  • Experience or completed coursework in some or all of the following areas of law: internet law, internet policy, freedom of speech (domestic and international), human rights, intellectual property, international law, privacy, data security, and/or licensing.  (JD, equivalent or PhD preferred)
  • Ability to work at the San Francisco office.

And it would be even more awesome if you have this:

  • Multilingual. Fluency in French or German is especially helpful.
  • Experience working in countries outside the United States or with clients or colleagues from outside the United States.
  • Experience with policy advocacy, such as with an NGO or in government.
  • A good sense of humor.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that supports Wikipedia, the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects, and our mission of free knowledge for every single person. We help bring new knowledge to people around the world, lower barriers to participation, and make it easier for everyone to share what they know. We do this by keeping the Wikimedia projects fast, secure, and available to all, protecting the values and policies that allow free knowledge projects like Wikipedia to thrive, building new features and tools to make it easy to read, edit, and share from the Wikimedia sites, and by supporting the communities of volunteers who make the projects possible.

At the Foundation, we build technology to help people everywhere access Wikipedia, across devices and in nearly 300 languages. We engineer privacy for our readers and editors so they can safely and securely explore Wikipedia. We create programs and initiatives to make Wikipedia freely available to more people in more parts of the world. We build new tools for the community of editors so they can continue to improve and grow Wikipedia. Roughly a quarter of our budget goes to supporting the community that make the site possible, including through grantmaking programs that enable volunteers and enrich the information on the sites.

The Wikimedia Foundation is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage people with a diverse range of backgrounds to apply.

More Information

https://wikimediafoundation.org

https://blog.wikimedia.org

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