Hi everyone,
Today I was approached by a journalist (who is a colleague of a friend of mine from Uni) at IDG regarding our position on the publication of the HD-DVD decryption key.
As far as I know: * the [[WP:OFFICE]] has so far refused to intervene in the matter and * the departure of Brad Patrick means we currently have no general counsel * the Foundation has recieved no DMCA take down notices regarding the matter
For the last 24 hours, we've been censoring the HD-DVD key from articles, talk pages, user pages and signatures and relying on draconian measures such as full protection of [[HD-DVD]] and blocks with the justification that we were awaiting official guidance.
Now that the desperately needed legal advice is apparently not forthcoming, it may eventually appear to outsiders that we are paranoid of what the AACS/MPAA may do to us instead of only being cautious. I am starting to feel uncomfortable that many administrators such as myself may be acting unilaterally over the matter based upon our own personal (mis)interpretations of the DMCA instead of enforcing an official stance or community consensus.
So how exactly should we respond to the press regarding this?
Yours sincerely, Andrew Lau (Netsnipe)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: mitchell_bingemann@idg.com.au mitchell_bingemann@idg.com.au Date: May 3, 2007 10:27 AM Subject: Re: Fwd: HD-DVD controversy To: netsnipe@gmail.com
Hi Andrew,
I'm a colleague of Liz's and was following the whole HD-DVD debacle. Just hoping for a Wikipedia update on the whole thing, where do you guys stand on it now? Cheeers,
Mitchell Bingemann Journalist IDG Online (02) 9902 2711
On 03/05/07, Andrew Lau netsnipe@gmail.com wrote:
Now that the desperately needed legal advice is apparently not forthcoming, it may eventually appear to outsiders that we are paranoid of what the AACS/MPAA may do to us instead of only being cautious. I am starting to feel uncomfortable that many administrators such as myself may be acting unilaterally over the matter based upon our own personal (mis)interpretations of the DMCA instead of enforcing an official stance or community consensus. So how exactly should we respond to the press regarding this?
As I said on the blog:
A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well ― I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
We're a project to write an encyclopedia, not a public graffiti wall. You want to paint "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0″ in fifty-foot high letters on every Hollywood studio, I'll buy brushes. You want to splatter it across Wikipedia, you can fuck off. I expect the article will contain the number in due course; I'd guess two to four weeks, any earlier would in my opinion only encourage further use of Wikipedia as a graffiti wall.
(The number is still in the spam filter, I've asked if there's any way to tell when it'll be safe to take it out.)
- d.
On Thu, 3 May 2007, David Gerard wrote:
As I said on the blog:
A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well $B!=(B I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
I entirely agree the number shouldn't be put in a zillion places in Wikipedia. But I get the impression that the loudest objections are about use of the number *at all* and that getting rid of number spamming is merely a more publically acceptable first step towards getting rid of it period.
The proper response is to allow the number on Wikipedia, but ban its use as spam, not to completely ban it in any form whatsoever.
We treat it just like anything else. We wouldn't add the New York Times to the spam blacklist -even if- some idiot was spamming "SUBSCRIBE TO THE TIMES TODAY!" links all over the place, because there are potentially legitimate uses that good editors may make for such links. Instead, we would stop the spammers while permitting legitimate use.
There's no good reason to permit the thing on userpages or anywhere else. It serves no legitimate encyclopedic purpose there. On the other hand, there -are- articles in which it really does serve a legitimate, encyclopedic purpose. Let's take it off the blacklist, whack the spammers, apply semi-protection as needed, but let it be used where it's genuinely encyclopedic and appropriate.
Seraphimblade
On 5/3/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Thu, 3 May 2007, David Gerard wrote:
As I said on the blog:
A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well ― I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
I entirely agree the number shouldn't be put in a zillion places in Wikipedia. But I get the impression that the loudest objections are about use of the number *at all* and that getting rid of number spamming is merely a more publically acceptable first step towards getting rid of it period.
The proper response is to allow the number on Wikipedia, but ban its use as spam, not to completely ban it in any form whatsoever.
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On 03/05/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Thu, 3 May 2007, David Gerard wrote:
As I said on the blog: A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well ― I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
I entirely agree the number shouldn't be put in a zillion places in Wikipedia. But I get the impression that the loudest objections are about use of the number *at all* and that getting rid of number spamming is merely a more publically acceptable first step towards getting rid of it period. The proper response is to allow the number on Wikipedia, but ban its use as spam, not to completely ban it in any form whatsoever.
I agree. But as I said, we don't lose anything by waiting a couple of weeks. We don't have to finish the article tomorrow.
- d.