Welcome to the tech policy podcast. I'm Evan Swartstraver. On today's show, Wikipedia for

Data. What are the laws that govern databases in the European Union and the U.S.? And how do they

enable or stifle research and innovation? Joining me to discuss this is Julia Shetza,

master's student in contemporary European studies with a concentration on

tech policy, and she's also working at Wikimedia, Germany. Julia, thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for having me. So before we jump in, I'd just like to point out that in our 100th episode

where we celebrated our 100 episodes, Baron and I talked about how Europeans often sit around a room

and talk about how to regulate American

tech companies without any Americans in the room. And then we proceeded to record a podcast where

two Americans sat in a room and talked about Europe without asking any Europeans what their

opinions were. So just kudos to me for getting an actual European on the show to talk about

European issues and not just speculating on what you guys actually think.

Well, thanks for opening up your horizon that way.

Of course, happy to.

So, Julia, before we jump into this topic, tell us about Wikipedia for Data.

So Wikipedia for Data is called Wikidata, and it's being developed right now in Berlin at the Wikimedia Germany offices.

We are the chapter which is concentrating on the German community behind Wikipedia, behind all the Wikimedia projects.

And our mother organization is in San Francisco, the Wikimedia Foundation.

And Wikidata is basically a database which has structured data, which humans and computers can read.

So community members can put in data, which is public domain,

because our license is CC0.

So it needs to be public domain.

...