I am not sure that needed to be that prolix. :) But yes, let's tease out
some things:
1. Wikimedia projects have quite strongly worded policies against copyright
violations. Many volunteer editors make good-faith efforts to uphold them.
Many other editors, knowingly or unknowingly, break them, and the
Wikiproject that deals with infringing contributors has a very large
backlog. In Commons, assertions that materials are "free" are not
infrequently unreliable.
2. I am concerned that the dangers of SOPA to Wikipedia were apparently
overstated for psychological effect.
3. I am concerned that users were told to stop marking single-purpose
accounts and IP editors in the – rather rushed – SOPA poll.
4. I am concerned at the whole timeline that began with a successful and
spontaneous Italian blackout protesting proposed legislation there, then
moved, via a large Wikimedia donation from Sergey Brin and his wife, to
official Wikimedia endorsements of Google's (and other large corporations')
anti-SOPA initiative, and the equally successful English Wikipedia blackout.
Let's remember that this was an unprecedented, very public departure from a
policy of neutrality that had served Wikimedia well for many years. I don't
think that paste will ever go back in the tube.
5. I am convinced that, as you say, many Wikipedians supported the blackout
in good faith, because they thought SOPA would "hurt Wikipedia". That's
what they were told, after all. And if they believed it was necessary for
Wikipedia's survival, why wouldn't they?
6. As for "supporting theft", I am certain that there are a fair number of
Wikipedians who do support what is presently "theft", or, to put it
differently, who support copyright reform and decriminalisation of various
types of copyright infringement that are illegal today. For God's sake,
Jimbo himself has been campaigning for a dude who put "fuck the police" on
his new website when his old one was shut down by law enforcement, and
generously said that same dude reminds him "of many great Internet
entrepreneurs". Wonderful.
7. When I joined this project, political neutrality was one of its main
pillars. Internet regulation is a party-political issue today, at least in
Europe, where the Pirate Party is burgeoning. I don't see blackouts to
protest Internet legislation as any different from blackouts to support or
oppose any other type of legislation along party-political lines. In my
view, Wikimedians who want to campaign should do so in their own names, and
take pains to disassociate Wikimedia (or Wikipedia) from their stance if
their association with Wikimedia is well known.
8. We've had this talk in the past about how Wikipedia is a "temple for the
mind", unsullied by political and commercial interests. It doesn't look
that way any more, if it ever did.
You see, I *liked* some of those ideals (if not necessarily the practice).
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 1:47 PM, FT2 <ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
(warning, tl;dr!)
**
*@Andreas - *I understand your sentiment, but in a reasoning way, I find I
don't agree with that assessment. For what it's worth, I edit a lot on law
- one of my GAs is a Supreme Court case, numerous others worked on, it's an
area I like, and I tend to read full rulings like some read science fiction
or fanbooks. It doesn't mean in any way I'm expert but I read draft
legislation. So I'm not dependent on any WMF writer to assist on that.
NPOV works well in articles with divided views, and suggests a good
approach is to characterise the issue and the divisions. In that spirit, my
attempt to fairly bridge the gap and explain where I see things diverging:
1. Some bring stolen goods to the party, we can agree. In this case that
means that some people breach copyright in a severe way online, which
can
fairly be characterised as theft if one ignores technicalities such as
the
minority of countries that don't make it a crime. In the vast majority
we
can agree it's theft in all jurisdictions. So yes, theft takes place. We
can agree it's significant, though in the context of global trade and
dubious "facts"there's a big dispute about the impact.
2. *(Evidence: The UK govt review of copyright theft online, Hargreaves
or something, I may have edited it, certainly read it, said of the
various
studies into online piracy that most were figures based on unproven
assumptions, or plucked from the air, or something of that kind, and
that
not one study could be found that was actually reliable in the sense of
unbiased fair and methodically rigourous conclusions)*.
3. Theft in general web-wide was never the reason or issue for the
protests by Wikimedians, or the WMF's involvement. It was not at any
time a
purported reason why *_Wikimedians_ *objected through *_this_
*site.There
was never a plausible claim that Wikimedian protest was even slightly
motivated by a wish to retain the ability of other sites to continue
crime.
4. As regards Wikimedia itself and its community, as far as I can tell,
both have very strong views that theft (ie copyvio) should not be
allowed
on this site. I see no evidence that parts of the
regular/established/core/active community have an agenda to improve our
project's use, or ability to use, copyvio material, see no evidence
anyone
here tries to turn a blind eye to it. We already have community policies
that set standards far higher than the law requires.
5. Is it therefore fair to characterize the objections to SOPA/PIPA as
"we want to do illegal things, someone wants to stop us, and we don't
want
that"? I can't see how that's sustainable.
6. I have the impression your complaint is that Wikimedians may have
protested on grounds that were (a) not well founded in that in your
view,
the suggested risks were inaccurate, and (b) in protesting they chose to
overlook harm elsewhere which these laws could have improved.
7. I think it's fair to characterize the objections of individual users
en masse and how they felt as, "We don't want to do illegal things, but
illegal things may be done or claimed wrongly to be done, or actions
threatened on the assertion of illegality. If this law passes, that
could
cause some things to be shut down for bad faith reasons or mistake
without
recompense, or legal concerns to have a chilling effect, and we don't
want
that"?
8. They could be correct or incorrect to have that concern. I'm looking
here at what individual Wikimedians like me, supporting the protest, may
have believed and felt. In other words, were Wikimedian community
protesters acting from a good faith belief there was a real concern, or
in
bad faith to gain by pretence a means to allow crime to occur? I think
the
former.
9. As supporting evidence I also note that the objections were not to
the basic princviple of cutting off piracy. They were to matters that
would
allow harm without good cause. It targeted DNS issues where the markup
committee had admitted they didn't know what technical issues would
arise.
It targeted shut down without fair hearing, and immunity for bad faith
or
mistake, no matter the harm done. Those could have been fixed. In the
alternative OPEN bill, they generally were. One can judge the protests'
intent by the points protested about. Whether or not that concern was
well-founded, it was a good faith concern by individual members of the
community expressing concerns.
From your complaints and descriptions, it's *not* that the projects offer
things "without consideration" as you suggested first. We do expect and
require consideration, such as attribution and license compliance in return
(see above). It's *not* that we give on the basis of "No strings" and
later
make demands - see above, giving does not imply indifference and doesn't
exclude the right to say "we see a problem here, please don't let that
problem happen". It *isn't* that we are hosting a giant volunteer party
and noticing some goods brought to be given away are stolen and we want to
ensure that can continue - we have rigorous standards and there's no
evidence people want to have looser ones or turn a blind eye to breaches.
Your stated issues so far - that something was given and later had
conditions added, or stolen material is covertly desired to be usable -
really dont stack up. What I *_think_* your *real** *issue is, is that you
feel the impact of SOPA/PIPA was exaggerated and it would not have had the
stated effects, and you feel the natural and rightful concern of community
members to protect freedoms and free speech and user-created sites, was
manipulated or given "spin" to motivate action which protected rights that
(in your view) werent at risk in the ways suggested. In the worst case
scenario, you suggest such manipulation, or spin, was driven by large
internet businesses and their links to WMF.
So maybe your *real *question is, were the legal analysis and the proposed
fears, significant/realistic, or were they manipulated, spun, and "sold" to
community members. That's a fair question. *If the analysis was
valid*then the community acted in good faith and with good reason.
*If the analysis was invalid* then the community acted in good faith but
was "sold" the idea on false or exaggerated grounds, perhaps to benefit
others' business (in your suggestion). It comes down to the validity of
legal analysis.
What is *not *fair is suggesting *the protests by mass Wikimedians* was
somehow intended either to support theft, or to impose demands related to
material understood to ave been freely gifted with no strings.
If that's close, then can you comment so far and we'll carry on.
FT2
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I am afraid that is not how it feels at all.
It's more like organising a
giant volunteer effort to provide a market stall handing out free sweets
and cakes for anyone who wants some. The stall is very popular, and many
people chip in, bringing in cakes they've baked and candy they've made.
And
some bring in stuff they've stolen from
factories and supermarkets.
Then someone suggests there should be a law against handing out stolen
goods, like apple pies that still have "Mr. Kipling's Exceedingly Good
Apple Pies" written on the wrapper. At that point, the popular market
stall
says, "We couldn't possibly continue to
hand out free sweets if you pass
a
law like that. We'd have to shut down,
because some of our sweets are
stolen. And just so you know what that would feel like, we're not opening
the stall today."
So now you assume that everyone who baked their own cakes and brought
them
in is against laws that forbid stealing. And
you're leveraging the
goodwill
these people have created to enable theft. And
you're misrepresenting
what
the law would mean to the operation of the market
stall: because all that
would be required is that if you see a Mr. Kipling label on a wrapper,
you
don't hand that over to a visitor. And later
it transpires that your
market
stall has come to be funded by a very large
organisation that stands to
profit from lax laws against theft, to the tune of tens of billions of
dollars ...
One clincher for me was Tim Starling's e-mail the other day, about how
the
community were ... let's say
"misinformed", to put it politely, about
what
SOPA would have meant for Wikipedia:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-July/121092.html
Man, I wish this organisation had an annual budget of $2 million rather
than $20 million again, like it did five or six years ago. It had ethical
problems then, what with Essjay and Carolyn and so forth, but there was
at
least a *plausible* semblance of innocence about
the effort. That has
well
and truly been lost.
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 3:00 AM, FT2 <ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
There's a fallacy going on here - ie a term
with two subtly different
meanings.
The community - who are the ones ultimately "making the gift" do so
altruistically, in the sense of not seeking *compensation*, but that's
not
the same as not expecting *consideration*. We do
expect consideration.
Attribution (CC-by-SA/GFDL) is one form of consideration. The offer of
this
> knowledge by editors has quite specific terms that we expect to be met
in
> return by the world at large, which is the
meaning of consideration.
>
> The offer of that knowledge, and its gifting, also doesn't imply *
> indifference*. This is more subtle, and arises because we aren't
donating
our time
and effort into a void. We are donating as a result of, and
often
to benefit, things we believe in, such as helping
others or free
knowledge. There is an implied expectation (by some, perhaps not by
others) that it will be treated with respect and used to further
humanity.
This kind of expectation isn't contractual, but it's there anyway. It's
the
> same kind of expectation that says you would probably be upset , if you
> spend a week trying to find something as a special gift for me, and I
> respond by flushing it down the toilet and saying "well you gave it to
me
so why
are you upset what I do with my property?" It might be legally
true,
> perhaps technically true, but it's certainly not socially and perhaps
not
> morally true.
>
> We donate time, effort and sometimes money, and we are not indifferent
to
whether
those are supporting things we believe in. We donate for free
knowledge and humanity, and do so because we care about free knowledge
and
> humanity. Sometimes we say *"Look, we care about these things enough
that
we put
this effort in, you care enough to support and appreciate us
putting
this effort in, so please listen when we say that
something is harming
the
ecosystem within which that effort is
placed"*. That is completely
ethical
> and appropriate; no less than a wildlife volunteer who cares for
dolphins
pointing
out things that harm dolphins or any other ecosystem that one
might care for and try to support by nurturing it over time. Very few
people throw sustained effort or money into a vacuum without any care
whether it grows or dies.
FT2
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 2:28 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> For the record, I did not endorse the SOPA blackout, and I deeply
resent
> my
> > work in Wikipedia being leveraged to that political end.
> >
> > And I deeply resent Jimbo's statements to the BBC today*, about how
"We
> gave
you Wikipedia and we didn't have to, and so you might want to
listen
to what
we have to tell you".
A gift is either made altruistically, without strings attached, or it
isn't. To claim selfless, altruistic purpose and then demand
consideration
in return for what has been given is disgusting.
*
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19104494
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