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The Signpost: 03 December 2012

The Signpost: 10 December 2012

A note

Jayen, my watchlist has more articles than most people have edits and I never look at it. This is a reminder to remind me if any action is ever required to those bondage and other articles. I know I said that you don't need me to do certain things, but I don't mind being kept abreast. Please give my regards to your better half. Drmies (talk) 16:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!, and have done (and best wishes back to you and yours). We're currently busy in our day jobs and do little or no editing. (Cock_and_ball_torture_(sexual_practice) still is in a dire state ...) Best, Andreas JN466 09:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 17 December 2012

RFC/U for Apteva: move to close

I am notifying all participants in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Apteva that Dicklyon has moved to close the RFC/U, with a summary on the talkpage. Editors may now support or oppose the motion, or add comments:

Please consider adding your signature, so that the matter can be resolved.

Best wishes,

NoeticaTea? 04:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Please stay off my talk page

I've had enough of you. I'll delete anything you post there, and if you persist, I'll ask others to help delete anything you post there. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:19, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Calm down, mate. I note you deleted my comment pointing out that, according to The Atlantic, PR agencies had been found to be editing Wikipedia on behalf of the government of Kazachstan, and that the Kazachstan government's investment in the Kazakh Wikipedia amounted to a rather higher sum than the 30 million Tenge quoted earlier. The Atlantic piece is a thoughtful article: you might want to read it, given your interest in PR editing: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/kazakhstans-pricey-sometimes-shady-international-re-branding-effort/251802/ Andreas JN466 17:52, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
What happened to the "open door policy"? Or the general view that your talk page has a special status as quasi village pump (not like any other user talk page), and that excluding people from it needs a pretty damn good reason? Rd232 talk 19:40, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
If I may; Jimbo has every right to ban anyone he wants to from his talk page. It's his talk page, not a village pump. There are plenty of people watching what Andreas writes here and elsewhere, and I'm sure Jimbo's attention will be drawn to it from time to time. He and Andreas are on the same side, essentially. This is all very regrettable. Jimbo could have, should have, been more practically responsive to many of Andreas's valid concerns. Andreas should have maintained his usual high level of respectfulness. This bridge is broken but not burned, yet. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 24 December 2012

Conspiracy theories

Your conspiracy theories are frankly ridiculous. If you believe that Google can buy Wikipedia's cooperation (especially with a measly $500,000) you're crazy. And if you think that Jimbo can influence the community to do his bidding, you're even more crazy. Frankly I have a hard time believing that you actually hold either of these views, as you are a generally intelligent person otherwise. Is it really so outlandish to think that Google, Jimbo, and the Wikipedia community could all oppose SOPA independently? I certainly opposed it, and no one even paid me to. Kaldari (talk) 00:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

People were told that the survival of Wikipedia was threatened by SOPA: Tim Starling decisively put his boot through that one. It was simply a falsity the community were told. Furthermore, I didn't like it that IP votes were allowed in the SOPA vote and people were told to stop marking single-purpose accounts. We exclude single-purpose accounts even from AfDs, but in the blackout vote, which turned Wikipedia from an NPOV encyclopedia into a political animal, we counted people turning up here for the first time the same as people who had made tens of thousands of edits here? Sorry, that does not feel right. And that decision came from WMF people, not the community. In addition, the vote was canvassed externally. We all know that relations between Google and WMF are "friendly"; Wales has said as much himself. Well, Google is a profit-making enterprise, and Wikipedia has no business being "friendly" with those, or at least no business being more friendly with them than with other profit-making enterprises. Google's astroturfing and the way the company uses its money to buy influence are very well documented. It's how multi-billion dollar businesses work, mate. Season's greetings, Andreas JN466 00:24, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
No one said "the survival of Wikipedia was threatened by SOPA". The quality of Wikipedia and it ability to operate free from government interference certainly were threatened by SOPA. The reason single-purpose accounts were allowed to vote was obvious: Most Wikipedia community members don't normally edit on meta. Yes the vote was advertized extensively, as was appropriate. It wasn't canvassed. And I know you know the difference. Yes, Google and Wikipedia are on friendly terms. So what? The Foundation is religiously dogmatic about not allowing any corporate influence. You can accuse the Foundation of lots of things, but it's absurd to suggest that it could be controlled by Google, especially with $500,000. That's the amount of money the annual fundraiser raises in 6 hours. Speaking of which, the smoking gun of Sergey Brin's November 18th donation just happens to correspond with the beginning of last year's fundraiser. Is it so implausible to think that he donated on that date because that's when everyone else was donating as well? Kaldari (talk) 00:51, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
The vote to black out the English Wikipedia was not on Meta, but here in the English Wikipedia. SPAs really were SPAs (the vote was canvassed on Reddit, here for example – 3878 up votes), and an editor was taken to ANI for tagging them, and told to stop. Philippe expressly said that completely new accounts' votes should have the same weight as those of established editors. Did you read Tim's mail above? Do you disagree with his argument? The rhetoric at the time was quite extreme -- "devastating to the free and open web", "if Wikipedia will be destroyed than we cannot let them destroy the internet", How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia and so forth. As for amounts, people build cultures of little favours to keep each other sweet: and half a million is not an insignificant amount: Philippe was only just saying that donations like that take months of work for him and his colleagues. There is no question that Google took a leading role in planning SOPA action and that Wikipedia collaborated with one set of commercial interests against another. As far as I am concerned, Wikipedia lost its neutrality that day. Andreas JN466 01:55, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
You're right, it was on en.wiki, but the same argument still applies. Most Wikipedians don't edit primarily on en.wiki, but lots of non-English Wikipedians had a strong interest in participating, especially since SOPA would have mainly effected access to websites outside the U.S. This was also a matter of interest to Wikipedia readers, many of whom wanted to participate even if they had never edited Wikipedia. Regardless, the results were a landslide, so I don't even see how this nitpicking is relevant. I read Tim's email and agree with most of it. He was debunking 2 statements:
  1. The strawman that SOPA would threaten the existence of Wikipedia (which no one had actually argued)
  2. Geoff's claim that compliance with court orders would be technically difficult
Let's look at number 1 first. Here is Geoff's blog post that David Gerard characterized as being the opinion that SOPA will threaten the existence of Wikipedia. If you read the blog post, you'll see that Geoff says no such thing. David Gerard's characterization of Geoff's post is a misleading strawman. Geoff said that it was possible that Wikipedia could be considered a search engine and be forced to remove external links, which seems reasonable given the broad definition in the statute. Personally, I agree with Geoff on this one, but even if I didn't, it's immaterial. If foreign websites start disappearing from the internet, it won't matter if we are forced to remove the links or not.
Regarding claim #2, I think Tim is completely right about this, and Geoff was just mistaken (as he has little technical knowledge of Wikipedia's databases). I find it ironic that you accept Tim's technical opinion (which is clearly his domain of expertise), but you reject Geoff's legal opinion (which is his area of expertise).
Regardless, I think most of the information in Geoff's blog post was accurate. You can attack other people's version of what he said all you want, but his actual statements were far from scaremongering. He even pointed out examples of how the bill had improved recently. Personally, I don't think his post went far enough. SOPA was a clear danger to Wikipedia (not to its existence, but to its ability to cite information). If you doubt that, ask yourself how likely it would have been for the U.S. government to use SOPA to make the Wikileaks memos disappear off the internet (which are widely cited on Wikipedia)? You might call that a conspiracy theory, but I think it's more likely than the one you've offered :) Kaldari (talk) 02:58, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Here are my 2 challenges to you:
  1. Show me one example of the Wikimedia Foundation stating that SOPA threatened the existence of Wikipedia. You've pointed out several examples of people saying this, but none were representatives of WMF.
  2. Show me one concrete piece of evidence that the WMF's actions were influenced by Google.
Kaldari (talk) 03:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Look, Reddit threads with literally thousands of upvotes and a link to the page are far more likely to have attracted a lot of new accounts voting a particular way, given that Reddit was already campaigning against SOPA, than anything else. If you think what we got was a representative cross-section of our readership then I would strongly disagree with that estimation. David Gerard is an official Wikimedia spokesman, and I reckon he would have made the same sorts of statements at the time. I agree Geoff was quite careful in what he said, but some of his detail was lost in translation, and rank-and-file Wikipedians understood something rather different. No time right now for more. Andreas JN466 05:51, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
"David Gerard is an official Wikimedia spokesman". If by "official" you mean "volunteer" who disagrees with pretty much everything the WMF ever does or says. You may have a point about Reddit, but I think this requires some scientific investigation before anyone can make claims one way or the other. It would be interesting to see how the votes would have turned out if new users were, in fact, excluded. Kaldari (talk) 06:33, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
"Official" as in the Press room page on meta, "Other regional contacts by language". Kaldari, if you are denying such easily documented and indisputable facts as this, just how reasonable can one expect you to be regarding the WMF political actions? (i.e. situations where there may be very strong circumstantial evidence, but not a "smoking gun"). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 09:37, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Did you bother reading the disclaimer right above his name? It says The following individuals are long time Wikipedians. Some speak officially for the Wikimedia Foundation, others do not. David Gerard certainly does not. Kaldari (talk) 10:04, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
If we are going to play legalistic parsing games, note my point was to "official". If you want to say that to be precise, he's an official Wikimedia regional contact, not spokesman, that's true, but not refuting the substance of the point that he is given an official status, as documented on the Wikimedia Foundation press room page. Again, why are we wasting time with this? I'm all for absolute accuracy, so if you wanted to observe in passing that he's a regional contact, not spokesman, as a matter of keeping terminology clear, fine. But using that as any implication of no official status is far more inaccurate than the confusion of the terms. Once more, look at how much tedium we have to grind through over this little detail. Now project this to analysis of possible undue influence of a major donor. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 10:37, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I ran a script on the votes and manually spot checked it. Here's what I came up with:

Option Total Votes Registered Users Autoconfirmed Users
1. Blackout US only, global banner 479 (39.6%) 443 (39.1%) 395 (38.9%)
2. Global blackout and banner 591 (48.9%) 558 (49.3%) 497 (49.0%)
3. Blackout and banner both US only 24 (2.0%) 24 (2.1%) 22 (2.2%)
4. No blackout, global banner 20 (1.7%) 18 (1.6%) 18 (1.8%)
5. No blackout, banner US only 19 (1.6%) 17 (1.5%) 16 (1.6%)
6. No blackout and no banner 76 (6.3%) 72 (6.4%) 67 (6.6%)

It looks like there was some inflation from IPs and single-use accounts, but it's spread out pretty evenly between all the different options. Even if all the non-autoconfirmed users are excluded from the tally, it changes the blackout-vs.-no-blackout result by less than half of 1 percent. In other words, the results are virtually the same. Let me know if you want the raw user lists so you can verify for yourself. Also, it should be mentioned that there was a straw poll before this vote that showed 89.9% support for doing something about SOPA. It's extremely rare that any proposal on Wikipedia gets that kind of overwhelming support. Kaldari (talk) 09:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

What do you find so hard to understand? SOPA affected ad-networks, search engines, and payment processors, that were dealing with non US based websites whose primary purpose was the distribution of pirate and counterfeit goods. Wikipedia falls into none of those categories. A small group 'Fight for the Future' was formed and given $300,000 through a front organisation, this small group, of essentially nobodies, is then flying from one coast to another to a strategy meeting at Mozilla HQ (worth $300 million a year to Google) with Google and the great and the good in Silicon Valley. Google at the same time is splashing out on Washington lobbyists, spending something in the region of $10 million above there usual budget. Their other front organisations such as Public Knowledge are also out shouting "The WOLF is coming, the WOLF is coming". I don't recall a single statement from the time that was balanced, perhaps you can find one that was not full of bullshit.
Back to blackouts. In October the Italian wikipedia was blacked out to protest some Italian anti-defamation legislation. I note that Jimmy Wales gave luke warm support to that, but thought that similar wouldn't happen elsewhere as there was greater influence with the governments. At the same time there was a tentative anonymous post onto meta calling for action on PIPA. Note the lie there it is repeated throughout the SOPA/PIPA campaigns that the bills would affect YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook etc, all US based websites which the SOPA/PIPA legislation excluded.
One idea out of 9th of November meeting was to blackout the various site logos on the 16th of November, this was chatted about between WMF staff and Fight For the Future. WMF staff were in agreement but couldn't act without community agreement, (see Village Pump for 15th November) there wasn't consensus for that. However WMF put out a statement saying that wikipedia was opposed to the legislation. At the same time negotiations had been proceeding for a $500,000 donation from the Brin's this was announced on the same day as the blog posting (after some 6 months of negotiations). On other sites the Fight for the Future people are attempting to dragoon the communities into supporting a blackout protest, REDDIT is the first to sign up (the management, Conde Nast [another mega-corporation], were at the 9th of November meeting). Jimmy Wales (remember him luke warm Italian supporter in early October, doesn't believe that anything like that would be necessary in the UK etc, is now throwing his weight behind such a protest in the US.
The troops are marshalled and sent into battle to support the advertising revenues of mega tech corporations.
Now which is more believable, that $500,000 was made available by Google to keep one of its friends blind sided, and that in general an anti RIAA sentiment was manipulated for the profit of a mega corporation, or that Congress was planning a constitutional coup, bypassing legal processes all on behalf of the MPAA/RIAA? Kaldari you were bought and sold. As they say: online if you aren't being charged then you are being sold. Accept it or dismiss it any way you can. John lilburne (talk) 10:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't care if Fight for the Future and Google are the devil's own spawn; it's irrelevant to my point. The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia community acted of their own volition due to their own interests. If those interests happened to have coincided with Google's interests, that's not an implication of the Foundation's motives or independence. Lots of organizations and individuals donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation. Some of them donate a lot more than $500,000. Under no circumstances, however, will the Wikimedia Foundation accept any money with corporate strings attached. Think about it for a second. If the Wikimedia Foundation was willing to accept money for favors, do you honestly think they would need to have an annual fundraiser? And as I've pointed out before, Brin's donation was right at the beginning of the fundraiser, so there was nothing fishy about the timing. And although plenty of other organizations may have been crying wolf about SOPA, the Wikimedia Foundation wasn't one of them. The information presented by the Foundation was factual and well-researched. You can try to rewrite history with your house-of-cards conspiracy theory, but I'll keep shooting holes through it because it's a bunch of baloney. So far none of you have presented a single compelling piece of evidence that Google influenced the Wikipedia blackout, or that the Wikimedia Foundation was misleading people with scaremongering. Frankly I don't see how you can be so adamant in your arguments with such a paucity of evidence. Kaldari (talk) 11:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
No the WMF did not act on their own volition, FFF were in contact with them in early November 2011, immediatly after the strategy meeting with Google. The Community was initially not in favour of making a political statement, that support was garnered and built upon lies, such as SOPA having direct impact on wikipedia. It did not, wikipedia was not affected by SOPA, nor was YouTube, nor Facebook, nor Twitter, all lies put about by Google and its shills. None of the sites that they said were affected were affected, you were manipulated by lies on behalf of tech corporations. Would $500,000 have been given to wikipedia if they had opposed the SOPA boycott or been neutral on the matter, we'll never know. What we do know is that after the $500,000 the WMF did not put to rest the lie that wikipedia would be affected by the legislation. John lilburne (talk) 11:53, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation is in contact with lots of organizations. For example, we regularly talk to the FBI. Are you going to tell me that the FBI secretly controls the Foundation? Being in contact with the FFF proves absolutely nothing. Why do you believe the contact didn't involve mutual interests, but only the interests of the FFF?
Secondly, when was the community not in favor of making a political statement? You're going to have to show some evidence for that one, and more than just an exchange between 2 people on the village pump.
Finally, your assertion that SOPA would not have affected Wikipedia is absurd. Wikipedia depends on unfettered access to information spread throughout the internet. Do you have any idea how often law enforcement agencies inadvertently takes down innocent websites because they happen to be on the same rack or IP address as an illegal site? Now imagine that times 1000 and without any recourse or oversight. Kaldari (talk) 12:14, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Firstly no one is talking about legitimate sites, but prove me wrong list links from wikipedia to sites and pages whose primary purpose is the distribution of pirate and counterfeit goods. Lets see what the extent of the issue is for wikipedia. Just much does wikipedia rely upon pirate and counterfeit sites?
Secondly, 'golf course' agreements and chats in bars amongst friends to help a bro out, and crony capitalism and $500K to oil the wheels what is the difference? John lilburne (talk) 13:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
Unlike laws like the DMCA, SOPA offered no routes of recourse or oversight (other than filing litigation). The DMCA is abused on a daily basis by large companies filing bogus complaints. Do you honestly believe that SOPA would never be abused? Especially as there was no penalty for misusing it? If so, I think you are being a bit naive. Regarding 'golf course' agreements, the difference is that Wikipedia isn't out to make money or help anyone else make money. $500,000 from Brin just means we don't take $500,000 from someone else. Our budget and commitment to our mission remains the same. The allegations you're making are quite serious and constitute allegations of criminal behavior. Why would Wikipedia risk it's reputation and future just to "help a bro out". It's absurd. If you have no evidence to back up these allegations, they constitute nothing more than speculation and trolling. Kaldari (talk) 02:30, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
There may be companies that file bogus DMCAs, I can think of one or two myself. The solution is to deal with them under the provisions of the DMCA, not throw your arms in the arm and scream the DMCA is rubbish because amongst the 10s of millions of takedowns we can find a handful of bogus ones. Google says that historically 97.5% of takdowns are legitimate. That SOPA did not provide remedies or safeguards is one of the MYTHS that were sold to you. Your argument is essentially the judges are either corrupt or stupid and would have issued orders to block legitimate content sites. John lilburne (talk) 13:25, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Now who's quoting propaganda! Try reading the bill for yourself rather than relying on conservative thinktanks to do your analysis for you. Sure you can get court relief from a SOPA shutdown, if you hire a lawyer to file a motion in a U.S. court. How many independent websites outside of the U.S. have the resources to do that? And I know for a fact that the majority of the DMCA take-downs that the Wikimedia Foundation receives are bogus. Most of them aren't even properly formulated, much less making a legitimate copyright infringement claim. Kaldari (talk) 21:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
There you go again with your zero faith in the judicial process. Odd that you'd look at the politics of the site rather than independently assess whether the site was correct in its analysis. I note that the Wall Street Journal reckoned that after the protests the majority of supporter for SOPA were Democrats , and of course the Unions were in favour too being as it is their members livelihoods that are being sold out to Google. What did that nasty website say again 20 million works, 60% higher wages, 60% of US exports, and I'll bet they weren't factoring in the counterfeit products either.

The primary method of finding illegal content online is Google search, which drives traffic to illegal sites that publish advertising often served by Google (although recently Google has gotten more sophisticated at hiding its tracks through intermediaries). And so the unholy alliance is formed: Google sends millions of users to illegal sites and sells advertising on those sites through a series of intermediaries or real-time barter trading desks, with prices that are propped up by the traffic that Google sends to the site. Then Google uses its lobbying and litigation enforcer muscle to keep governments off the backs of all in the chain.

I suspect you'll close your eyes to that too. However, I can assure you that the DMCAs I issue are NOT bogus and I will follow through on them. And like anyone with a largish website I've received bogus complaints myself. So what. Its part of being on the interwebby thing. Dealing with it does not mean involving oneself in acts of spite against millions of workers, and aligning oneself with corporate greed. I'm sorry that you were taken advantage of, many have in the past and many will in the future. The trick is to learn from the experience. John lilburne (talk) 23:19, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Re challenge 1, Sue Gardner's letter announcing the ban said the legislation "if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia". She quotes "devastating to the free and open web." "We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. And we depend on a legal infrastructure that also allows other sites to host user-contributed material, both information and expression. For the most part, Wikimedia projects are organizing and summarizing and collecting the world’s knowledge. We’re putting it in context, and showing people how to make to sense of it. But that knowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to." "We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States, don’t advance the interests of the general public ..." "hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone."
  • This is not a neutral, encyclopedic, NPOV description of the legislation and its effects, but a piece of propaganda. The language is dripping with emotiveness and calculated to create the impression that Wikipedia and other sites like it were threatened with "devastation". In fact, what would have happened is that instead of having http://thepiratebay.se/ at the bottom of the Pirate Bay article it would have been http://thepiratebay.se/. Wow. That really would have compromised Wikipedia's educational mission!
  • And if you agree with Tim's technical argument, why weren't people like him consulted before describing the effects on Wikipedia to the community? The WMF loaded the dice right from the beginning: through the way it described the problem, which was calculated to panic people, and through the way it suspended ordinary limits on participation in an RfC to allow externally canvassed votes in. How many Redditors have Wikipedia accounts that are more than four days old, or have made more than ten edits? As it was, the result was preordained. Moral: to generate a stampede, just shout "fire" in a cinema. --Andreas JN466 12:08, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, Sue said that SOPA would damage Wikipedia, which is likely true. She didn't say it would threaten Wikipedia's existence. We seem to have very different opinions on what effects SOPA actually could have had on Wikipedia and the rest of the internet. Thus your view that the WMF was scaremongering and my view that they weren't being proactive enough. As it's about 5 hours past my bedtime, I'm not going to devote another hour to elaborating on the dangers of SOPA. You can start with reading the Stop Online Piracy Act article (which Google paid me handsomely to write). If you really think SOPA was basically harmless, you're keeping your head in the sand. Yes, there was lots of misinformation being spread at the time (from both sides of the debate), but there were also lots of people legitimately and rightly worried about the effects of this legislation. You're welcome to argue with those concerns, but there's no need to resort to far-flung conspiracy theories. Kaldari (talk) 12:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
      • Sue said the legislation would be "devastating to the free and open web." "We depend on a legal infrastructure that makes it possible for us to operate. The message is quite clear, i.e. that it would become impossible for Wikipedia to operate, and that is indeed the understanding many Wikipedians took away from it.
      • But more importantly, Wikimedia is premised on the principle of the neutral point of view. It's a fundamental pillar of what this site has always said it stands for. There is much that is wrong with Wikipedia, but this principle is not one of those things. It is laudable. I believed in that principle when I started participating here, and adding value to this site. This principle of neutrality was jettisoned in the SOPA affair. You do not tell people that you are above politics and invite their participation on that basis, only to then turn around and take sides in a political dispute. It was a breach of trust, and a violation of the covenant underlying people's participation here. Information on SOPA given to the community should have been encyclopedic, and presented both sides of the argument neutrally, as would befit a neutral encyclopedia. We tell our contributors to "write for the enemy". In not doing so themselves, the WMF was exposed as a hypocrite. I am no friend of SOPA, but I considered the value of the NPOV principle a higher one. Andreas JN466 13:28, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
      • Conspiracy pish. The SOPA boycott was orchestrated by a criminal, tax avoiding, company of scofflaws and their cohorts. Hardly a conspiracy given the number of them that are bragging about it. Also hardly a political awakening of the masses as those congressmen that supported SOPA suffered no backlash 9 months later when they came up for election. Just a flash mob shepherded to the stockyards, cajoled along by lies. John lilburne (talk) 13:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Here, courtesy of a helpful soul, is a post by Jay Walsh from 14 December 2011: "Today the Wikimedia Foundation posted an important update on how the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation being considered in DC this week threatens an open and free web, and particularly how it threatens Wikipedia. [...] We encourage everyone to broadly share this information among our volunteer community, throughout your networks, and wherever an audience passionate about protecting the free and open web can be found."
  • What on earth were people supposed to understand when they were told by the official WMF spokesman that the legislation "threatened Wikipedia", if not a threat to Wikipedia's existence? If something "threatens an open and free web", that means in English: "If it is allowed to pass, there won't be an open and free web any more". So what does it mean when it is said that something "threatens Wikipedia"?
  • And all that stuff about "free and open web" is bullshit, if you ask me, if what we are talking about is being able to watch Hollywood movies online without paying for a DVD. Some commentator the other day said, it's a bit like being for "free shirts": "You should just be able to go into a clothes shop and walk out with one without having to pay for it." That's a childish attitude, and not the basis of a long-term sustainable business model for anyone. But call it "free and open", and you can make it sound like something holy and benevolent. Andreas JN466 19:57, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Irrespective of our different viewpoints on this, Kaldari, I appreciate your honestly held perspective, and your coming here to let me know about it. It's quite possible for a critic to become too jaundiced, and dialogue is useful. You are always welcome here. Andreas JN466 16:59, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. I hope that we can learn something from each other's perspectives. Reading through your examples above, I have to admit that some of the language from Jay and Sue was overly emotional. I can assure you, however, that that emotion was their own and not something manufactured on the behalf of Google. A guy from Chicago-Kent College of Law is currently writing a book about the SOPA protests. He extensively interviewed all the people involved at the Foundation back in October. When that book comes out, I sincerely hope you'll read it so that you can get a better idea of what actually transpired at the WMF. It involved lots of people volunteering their time (often until the wee hours of the morning) to fight for something they believed was worth fighting for. You can call that naive or idealistic or misguided, but you cannot call it "crony capitalism" as John does.
Ironically, when the decision was made to move ahead with the blackout (once we saw the vote was a snowball), we had a hard time getting in touch with anyone at Google that knew what was going on. We wanted to let them know we were doing a blackout and make sure it wasn't going to kill our search rankings (again acting out of our own interests, not Google's). If Google was the sophisticated mastermind you guys envision, you'd think they would have at least supplied us with a contact person! And if they had wanted to bribe us, they could have given us something truly useful, like free Google Adwords for our fundraiser (so that we wouldn't have to run banners on the site). If you don't agree with a single other statement I've made in this argument, I hope you will honestly consider my conviction that Google had absolutely no direct influence over the WMF's decision to run a blackout. Most of the people at WMF would be quite happy to see Google go up in flames along with all the other 800 lb pound internet gorillas (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.). Ironically, we were actually miffed that Google wasn't taking our lead and doing a real blackout. From our perspective, the Wikimedia community was the political force in action during the blackout, not Google's unsophisticated lobbying efforts. The media completely ignored this fact, however, and was only able to frame it as a simplistic story of Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood, i.e. from an exclusively capitalist perspective. The story wasn't that simple though. Yes, the WMF was on the same side of the fight as Google, but we were also on the same side of the fight as the Internet Archives (whom we actually consider an ally). Like all wars, there were more than 2 sides. There was no reason for Google to bribe us, not us to bribe Google. Since you didn't view SOPA as a danger to "the free and open internet", I'm sure the media's portrayal of the situation (Google vs. RIAA) makes more sense to you. I can tell you, however, that there's more to the story than that.
Yes, SOPA was threatening to search engines, but it was also a carte blanche for the government and entertainment industries to have free reign over what can and can't be accessible over the internet. I'm sure you're aware of how often the DMCA is currently abused and how much of a chilling effect it has had on the internet (if not, start reading http://chillingeffects.org/). Even though the DMCA was just supposed to be a tool for fighting piracy and copyright infringement, it ended up becoming a tool to suppress criticism and parody. I myself had to file a counter-DMCA notice to get material about a white supremacist group restored to Wikipedia after it had been removed due to a bogus DMCA take-down notice. SOPA was in many ways applying the ideas of the DMCA to the rest of the world, and without the recourse mechanism supplied by the DMCA. If your site was taken off the internet by SOPA, there was no counter-notice mechanism. You were just screwed. The only way to have the site reinstated would be to file a motion in U.S. court to suspend or vacate the order (which most people don't have the resources to do). I don't know about you, but I don't trust the U.S. government and the entertainment industries with that kind of unchecked and unsupervised power. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I've also been around for a while and seen how the internet has changed for the worse. SOPA was certainly part of that trajectory, and I for one am glad that it was defeated. Kaldari (talk) 04:50, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Of course Google wouldn't blackout, to do so would have cost them $millions, and once people had switched search engine many wouldn't have switched back. For the cynical one might ask why Jimmy didn't blackout Wikia either. This was all about profits, ya'll say it was to counteract the evil big labels lobbying well their combined lobbying is nothing in comparison to just one copyright scofflaw. You talk about abuse of the DMCA, but in reality there is very little, there are a handful of such issues in the last 12 years, the takedown and counter notice seem to be working. As a consequence of the blackout Google were shamed by the RIAA into opening up their DMCA process, previously they were limiting the number of DMCA notices one could file per week. The result has been an increase from 1.2 million to over 12 million a month, there is no sign of it levelling off, and this is just on their search engine alone. Google are now reporting DMCA requests that they didn't respond to, previously they report that 97% were valid, I guess that the shear number of DMCA requests has brought that headline percentage way, way down. It doesn't seem to be the evil RIAA and MPAA that are filing bogus reports either. From what I can see they tend to by non-native English speakers screwing up the niceties of the form, but hey go knock yourself out. Google's response has been to herald that it is dropping the pirate sites down the search listings (laugh). Currently though seems to have changed tactics and is getting its shills to complain about how onerous the task is. Notice the lie there, as seen in an earlier link, it wasn't that the copyright holders weren't previously using the tools given to them it was that the tools Google asked them to use were throttled. Additionally, the copyright holders are targeting the payment processors, and brands to remove adverts that are appearing on pirate sites. You complained about chilling effects the results of SOPA will probably be achieved by commercial pressures. Paypal has already privately withdrawn payment processing to the sites, SOPA would have provided a legal framework, and you talk about chilling effects!
Now lets talk about counterfeiting the UK site is shuttered, but no doubt will have started up with a new URL. This happens with all goods. Value nowadays is increasingly in the design of the objects and the tooling for manufacture. It is these designs along with the tooling (CAM programs) that are being ripped off, and used in back alley production facilities. Hence the overall close resemblance to the official product but shoddy build quality. The US economy and its workforce are being ripped off by 100s of $millions a year. All of this brand ripping off fuels consumerism, these brands need to be creating new designs every couple of months just to stay ahead of the counterfeiters, that means that they need to persuade you all to junk serviceable objects and buy new stuff at an ever increasing rate.
There are businesses all across the US that are dependant on the major IP industries. Whether it is in sound mixing, the design of futuristic sets and props, the manufacture of replacement parts, development of Computer graphics and animation programs, improved camera designs, digital sound systems, and film projection techniques to name but a few. None of this starts off as consumer systems it is always developed first for the major IP industries. You have millions of jobs in the US that are dependent on IP. It ain't all suits at Sony Music.
In the past 12 years corporations like Google have spent $millions on getting ya'll to think that IP is evil. They do it though tame academics, tame tech journals, and tame bloggers, most of whom are on the Google payrole in some way. Touch Google's IP though and they'll sick the lawyers on yer. IP is your economies bread and butter. Adverts and websites will not sustain your lifestyle, you really do need to take the theft of IP seriously, its not sticking it to the evul MPAA suits by downloading the latest blockbuster. Its the small independent film makers that are being shafted.
I don't blame you for SOPA, over the last decade you have been sold a pup, led to believe that IP is bad by those that are directly profiting from its theft. Everyone should have the right to give stuff away, they should NOT be compelled to give it away so that Google can profiteer from it. SOPA/RIPA had built in judicial oversight, what you seem to be saying os that Congress, the Supreme Court, and the rest of the judiciary were being bought, and honest people needed to stand up. If you think about it that is where the conspiracy theories were in SOPA/RIPA that somehow you could no longer trust 200+ years of your institutions history.
Every so often we need to re-evaluate whether what we believe to be true actual is true, I think you should do so now. John lilburne (talk) 10:28, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
BTW Kaldari up above you talk about a book being written by some guy from Chicago-Kent College of Law. I assume you mean Edward Lee and The New Free Speech. Well lets have a look at him for a moment, on his site promoting the book is this "Justin Bieber blasts Senate bill as “ridiculous”" along with a sound clip, where a 17yo is waylaid and asked to respond to the false premise that taking clips by artists and putting them on YouTube would be a felony, which is a complete and utter lie as YouTube was never part of SOPA. That this is now being used to promote Edward Lee's book, shows just how corrupt those behind the SOPA boycott really were. There is loads more on the Justin Bieber crap on that frontpage too. Not surprisingly they couldn't help themselves and also added the VIACOM vs Google case too, oh and here is another clip that starts off featuring Google followed by the lies concerning lack of due process. I think we know where the this guy is coming from here. John lilburne (talk) 17:32, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for letting us know where you stand on this John. If your stance is that the DMCA hasn't done any harm and that Wikipedia doesn't respect intellectual property, we are clearly living on different planets. Kaldari (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
I haven't really had time to attend to this discussion today, but seeing my talk page light up, the question occurred to me – would you accept that the DMCA also has done good? Because it seems to me, everything in this area is a trade-off; it's a question of finding the golden mean, so that neither producers nor consumers carry all the burden. Every solution has downsides. The challenge is to distribute these downsides equitably. So, again: hasn't DMCA also done good? Andreas JN466 21:37, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Sure, I imagine it's done plenty of good, but it was a poorly crafted law that has also done a lot of damage. Besides myself, I have 2 friends personally that have had to deal with bogus DMCA take-downs. One of them filed a counter-notice against Texas Instruments (which took some guts), and the other backed down because he didn't want to risk having to go to court (even though the take-down was completely bogus). This happens on a daily basis. Most of it doesn't get reported in the news or on chillingeffects.org; things just silently disappear from the internet. And there are plenty of examples of the DMCA being abused for political purposes, for example taking down parody or criticism videos from Youtube. The main problem with it is that there is absolutely no penalty for abusing it. It was written with the interests of large media companies in mind, not the interests of the public. This is the same problem with SOPA. I would be perfectly happy with a well-written rewrite of SOPA that actually balanced the interests of media companies, internet companies, and the public. Notice I cited 3 parties there, not 2. A bill that catered to Google as well as the RIAA would also be unacceptable if it didn't protect the interests of the public and provide proper checks and balances against abuses by corporations. Kaldari (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
There are 10s (if not 100s) of millions of websites, billions of webpages, hardly any of which attract DMCA takedowns. The claim that bogus DMCAs are an everyday reality for any but a handful of site operators has no evidence to back it up. In the last decade we know of a few DMCA trolls, and a handful dumb mistakes by automated systems, and that's it. Google boast that they don't remove bogus claims, perhaps they are lying (not unlikely) but they do make a song and dance over any such bogus claims that do come their way. Yet we aren't seeing many such reports at all. In any case the DMCA did not invent lawyers, or companies sending out bogus demands, they've been doing that since the invention of writing. Every week or so national papers will retell stories of bogus bills being sent out, of old ladies getting a $100K phone bill or something. There is no real penalties imposed there either. Should there be effective penalties for doing so? Yes of course. Is the system totally screwed because there isn't, well no. Unless you think that the non-online world is some utopian place whether the sun shines everyday, no one has to earn a living, no one goes hungry and everything is free. John lilburne (talk) 00:34, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Whether wikipedia respects IP is a different issue. The issue here is that when called upon the WMF sided with those that do not, and with those that lie and mislead. That they allowed the community to be manipulated by false premises. If there is any doubt about WP and the protection of 60% of US exports here is a recent comment by Jimmy where he oozes hatred for the content industries:

The reality is that Hollywood lobbyists (care to share your funding and affiliations with us?) are pushing this meme to try to avoid reaching the conclusion that they hate beyond belief: the public actually cares about, and is fed up with, the outrageous demands of the content and copyright lobby.

I doubt that we can get clearer than that the Jimmy is still narked about not being able to but Game of Thrones in the UK ahead of it being shown there. John lilburne (talk) 23:32, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
BTW, if you're interested in the economic effects of IP law, you may be interested in reading Thomas Jefferson's letters to Issac McPherson. The issues he discusses mirror many of the current issues being debated today. Especially how IP law that significantly favors one industry can strangle the development of other industries, and end up being a net detriment to both the economy and the public good. As Andreas said, it's all a question of balance. Kaldari (talk) 19:40, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm Jefferson in those letters was specifically talking about patents, not copyright. I don't think that Jefferson said much at all about copyright, as an inventor he stuck to patents which he thought were justified as they benefited society, but rewrite Jefferson if you must. In any case I seem to recall that a patent lasts for 20 years which is an increase of 6 years in the last 220+ years. and patents as far as I recall were NOT part of SOPA. However if you want to develop this idea I'm listening. John lilburne (talk) 20:34, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Interesting passage in a paper chronicling the internal dynamics of Wikipedia's SOPA protest:

But as a response to these early votes, almost all of the people who opposed the blackout pointed to the institutional problem of using Wikipedia for political goals, and claimed it was illegitimate and “unconstitutional” under Wikipedia’s internal norms. The opposition made it clear that while they personally shared the view that SOPA should be fought, Wikipedia as a project should not take a stand, as it would undermine Wikipedia’s prestige as a neutral encyclopedia. [...]

In response to the institutional objections, subsequent ‘support’ votes moved away from their personal views about SOPA, and raised new arguments that were meant to trump the illegitimacy claim. Instead of arguing that opposing SOPA was good or beneficial, they argued that it was essential. We can trace a new line of arguments, according to which SOPA puts at jeopardy the very existence of Wikipedia, and therefore the community has no option but to disregard its own policies and norms in order to save the project. An interesting strand of this line of arguments invoked the Ignore All Rules (IAR) policy as a formal–legal way to suspend Wikipedia’s policies in time of need.

Andreas JN466 22:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Response. John lilburne (talk) 22:29, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
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