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Thought I might link the latest Orlowski 'article'.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/wikipedia_charity_not/
"Wiki-fiddling isn't a charitable activity, according to the UK tax man. Revenue and Customs is denying tax privileges that go with charity status to Wikimedia UK, or Wiki UK Limited, as it's officially registered."
Any article that start with an insult, you know it's going to be good! (Also, some carelessness - is the capitalization really so hard to get right?)
Worth noting also is the quiet little redefinition - something isn't charitable activity unless it can get tax breaks.
'Wikimedia requested that because it is "disseminating knowledge", the operating company should receive charitable tax perks, stating its objective is to "aid and encourage people to collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify content... [blah blah]"'
Scare quotes, belittling phrases ('charitable tax perks'? seriously); the second quote is neutral, but one could be forgiven for not even noticing that due to the insert of 'blah blah'. A more charitable person would understand that all those terms are very specific and there for a reason. Of course, a more charitable person would be writhing in utter shame that they are Orlowski.
"Alas, the tax man didn't agree that merely curating and publishing the world's most intensely-edited [citation needed] compendium of Lightsaber combat and female pornographic film actors doesn't count as education."
Not particularly stylish a variant of this hoary old criticism; and not even correct. We amputated our lightsaber coverage with a chainsaw and shot the bloody stumps over to Wookieepedia a long time ago. (Although I'll admit to not knowing how meritorious our porn coverage is.)
'"The production of an encyclopaedia is not the charitable advancement of education and has not been accepted as such in law... If the object [should] be the mere increase of knowledge it is not in itself a charitable object unless it is combined with teaching or education," Customs responded in declining the request.
Harsh, or what?'
Perhaps. But then, as an American unacquainted with British charity laws, this sounds to me like 'we've never supported encyclopedias, and we have no mandate to start now'; which while arguably unfair and silly isn't particularly harsh. 'Just doing my job, ma'am.'
"The problem could be solved if, as everyone expects, Wikipedia becomes a commercial operation that doesn't need charitable status. Bono-backed VC company Elevation Partners has chucked $1.35m at Wikipedia, and the Mozilla Foundation provides a workable legal precedent: a non-profit with a commercial wing. License changes are currently being mooted."
This is actually my favorite paragraph in the entire piece. There's so much to like about it! There's a subtle touch in saying 'Bono-backed' - - it's utterly irrelevant, of course, but it immediately brings associations of Hollywood and sneering liberals and ineffective social policies and aid expenditures and staleness. There's a foisting of views; 'everyone expects' Wikipedia to become a commercial operation? Indeed.
And then there's that last line. Again we have an exquisite word choice. The license changes could be 'voted upon', or less informatively, 'discussed' or 'considered'. But instead we have 'mooted', with its connotations of snootyness and academia. Not to mention that we are clearly led to believe the license changes will facilitate such conversion, by sheer juxtaposition if nothing else. (Although I have been educated stupid by my readings of the GFDL and CC licenses, and so cannot appreciate just how CC-BY-SA will enable the enrichment of Elevation Partners, that they may continue to light their cigars with Benjamin in the manner to which they have accustomed themselves.)
"But for now, the fiddlers could find ways of making the operation look more edukashnul and that. We suggest Wikia UK establish a British School of Fiddling, in which the public can be tutored in the labyrinthine layers of bureaucracy required to have their edits to "the Encyclopedia anybody can edit" rejected."
And a final salvo. I take off some points here for invoking fiddling twice; it's not stylish, as it was already used in the lead. Three times in an article is just tedious. 'edukashnul' gets some points for having no apparent target - at least, I can't figure out who the spleen is directed at. The government? The chapter? The Foundation? Otherwise, good rhetoric in the figure of a School of Fiddling.
A jolly enjoyable read! My day would surely have been less enjoyable without Orlowski's latest. With enemies like these, who needs friends?
- -- gwern
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
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Thought I might link the latest Orlowski 'article'.
HI Gwern,
please ask the admin of this mailinglist to remove your posting from the mailing list archive, if you do not have permission to reprint this article.
Mathias
2009/4/29 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
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Thought I might link the latest Orlowski 'article'.
HI Gwern,
please ask the admin of this mailinglist to remove your posting from the mailing list archive, if you do not have permission to reprint this article.
You could have a good stab at arguing fair use - it's a non-commercial commentary on the article. Quoting large parts of it would probably be ok, quoting the whole thing is somewhat questionable, though, I admit.
2009/4/29 Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com:
please ask the admin of this mailinglist to remove your posting from the mailing list archive, if you do not have permission to reprint this article.
We don't actually have the ability to do that - the devs would have to.
- d.
Gwern is criticizing the article. The Wiki-En operates under US copyright law. In the US you may quote an entire copyrighted work if your purpose is to criticize/critique it.
That seems like what Gwern did here.
Will
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:06 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Gwern is criticizing the article. The Wiki-En operates under US copyright law. In the US you may quote an entire copyrighted work if your purpose is to criticize/critique it.
Unfortunately, this is not an accurate reading of fair use.
Take note of item 3 in the US Copyright site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
2009/4/30 Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:06 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Gwern is criticizing the article. The Wiki-En operates under US copyright law. In the US you may quote an entire copyrighted work if your purpose is to criticize/critique it.
Unfortunately, this is not an accurate reading of fair use.
Take note of item 3 in the US Copyright site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Which does not state that an entire copyrighted work may never be quoted.
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:32 PM, James Farrar james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
2009/4/30 Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com:
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:06 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Gwern is criticizing the article. The Wiki-En operates under US copyright law. In the US you may quote an entire copyrighted work if your purpose is to criticize/critique it.
Unfortunately, this is not an accurate reading of fair use.
Take note of item 3 in the US Copyright site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Which does not state that an entire copyrighted work may never be quoted.
This is entirely case law, so you won't find anything instructive to that effect.
Nearly every public web site or publicly archived mailing list strongly discourages, if not bans, full quoting. Given the Wikimedia community's stringent standards w.r.t. copyright, we should do no less.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 1:16 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "Taxman denies Wikipedia UK charity status"
Nearly every public web site or publicly archived mailing list strongly discourages, if not bans, full quoting. Given the Wikimedia community's stringent standards w.r.t. copyright, we should do no less.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)>> ------------------
{{Fact}} You cannot show evidence for a statement as broad as that. I'm sure you know that. Try not to be hyperbolic, that sort of argument doesn't work very well here.
Will
<<-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:01 am Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "Taxman denies Wikipedia UK charity status"
On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:06 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Gwern is criticizing the article. The Wiki-En operates under US copyright law. In the US you may quote an entire copyrighted work if your purpose is to criticize/critique it.
Unfortunately, this is not an accurate reading of fair use.
Take note of item 3 in the US Copyright site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)>> -------------------------------
You are misreading what they are stating. They are not stating that you cannot use the entire work. Just consider this example and you'll see why. MadTV extracts an entire melody and then adds other words to it. They repeat music videos, with the exact same melody and different words.
If you can answer how exactly they can get away with that, without needing any permission, and not in violation of copyright, then you can answer the question of what happened in this thread, when Gwern had to cite each section, to which Gwern was critiquing. It is the same underlying issue.
Will Johnson
Gwern Branwen wrote:
Thought I might link the latest Orlowski 'article'.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/wikipedia_charity_not/
"Wiki-fiddling isn't a charitable activity, according to the UK tax man. Revenue and Customs is denying tax privileges that go with charity status to Wikimedia UK, or Wiki UK Limited, as it's officially registered."
Any article that start with an insult, you know it's going to be good!
Insult to whom? Tax collectors are always fair game, and I would suggest that "wiki-fiddling" is an ironic twist of the tax man's views.
Worth noting also is the quiet little redefinition - something isn't charitable activity unless it can get tax breaks.
Tax breaks derive from charitable activity. That's exactly how I read him. Where's the redefinition?
'Wikimedia requested that because it is "disseminating knowledge", the operating company should receive charitable tax perks, stating its objective is to "aid and encourage people to collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify content... [blah blah]"'
Scare quotes, belittling phrases ('charitable tax perks'? seriously); the second quote is neutral, but one could be forgiven for not even noticing that due to the insert of 'blah blah'. A more charitable person would understand that all those terms are very specific and there for a reason. Of course, a more charitable person would be writhing in utter shame that they are Orlowski.
"Blah blah" = "More legalese follows".
Maybe the drafters had specific reasons in mind when they employed these words, but they obviously failed to take into account what it would take to satisfy Inland Revenue when they used them. "Charitable tax perks" is certainly a term of colloquial art that could be used to generally describe the benefits received by any registered charity.
'"The production of an encyclopaedia is not the charitable advancement of education and has not been accepted as such in law... If the object [should] be the mere increase of knowledge it is not in itself a charitable object unless it is combined with teaching or education," Customs responded in declining the request.
Harsh, or what?'
Perhaps. But then, as an American unacquainted with British charity laws, this sounds to me like 'we've never supported encyclopedias, and we have no mandate to start now'; which while arguably unfair and silly isn't particularly harsh. 'Just doing my job, ma'am.'
Some Americans can be just as unacquainted with British ironic writing as with British charity laws. The result is certainly harsh, but that's what you get when you apply rules strictly, and legal precedent tends to favour a more traditional interpretation of "educational"
"The problem could be solved if, as everyone expects, Wikipedia becomes a commercial operation that doesn't need charitable status. Bono-backed VC company Elevation Partners has chucked $1.35m at Wikipedia, and the Mozilla Foundation provides a workable legal precedent: a non-profit with a commercial wing. License changes are currently being mooted."
This is actually my favorite paragraph in the entire piece. There's so much to like about it! There's a subtle touch in saying 'Bono-backed'
- it's utterly irrelevant, of course, but it immediately brings
associations of Hollywood and sneering liberals and ineffective social policies and aid expenditures and staleness. There's a foisting of views; 'everyone expects' Wikipedia to become a commercial operation? Indeed.
Innovation in education does smack of "sneering liberalism", and such talk is bound to add one more painful knot in conservative jockstraps.
"But for now, the fiddlers could find ways of making the operation look more edukashnul and that. We suggest Wikia UK establish a British School of Fiddling, in which the public can be tutored in the labyrinthine layers of bureaucracy required to have their edits to "the Encyclopedia anybody can edit" rejected."
And a final salvo. I take off some points here for invoking fiddling twice; it's not stylish, as it was already used in the lead. Three times in an article is just tedious. 'edukashnul' gets some points for having no apparent target - at least, I can't figure out who the spleen is directed at. The government? The chapter? The Foundation? Otherwise, good rhetoric in the figure of a School of Fiddling.
Could it be that traditional "edukashun" is the problem. That word alone strengthens my view that government is the real object of the criticism. You're just shooting the messenger.
Ec
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On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:24 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Gwern Branwen wrote:
Thought I might link the latest Orlowski 'article'.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/wikipedia_charity_not/
"Wiki-fiddling isn't a charitable activity, according to the UK tax man. Revenue and Customs is denying tax privileges that go with charity status to Wikimedia UK, or Wiki UK Limited, as it's officially registered."
Any article that start with an insult, you know it's going to be good!
Insult to whom? Tax collectors are always fair game, and I would suggest that "wiki-fiddling" is an ironic twist of the tax man's views.
Er.
That might be plausible if Orlowski hadn't been writing mendaciously about Wikipedia, and using 'wiki-fiddling' as an insult for, like, half a decade now.
Worth noting also is the quiet little redefinition - something isn't charitable activity unless it can get tax breaks.
Tax breaks derive from charitable activity. That's exactly how I read him. Where's the redefinition?
What he's getting at is he's trying for the proof that charitableness ⊃ tax-breaks ~tax-breaks ∴ ~charitableness.
Which is of course a formally invalid proof, but nevertheless the hope is that the reader will conclude that because the tax-man has adjudged Wikipedia not worthy of tax-breaks, that Wikipedia is not a charitable enterprise. That this is wrong is obvious once you know that not all charitable things get breaks - for example, I understand that one way in the US to fail 401(c) status is to get too much funding from one place (the 'public support' test, or whatever it is).
Which raises the question, what then is Wikipedia? It's 'digital sharecropping' for the benefit of Jimbo and rich hedge funds etc. etc. This Orlowski will go into later... (On a tangent, this general viewpoint seems to be common to critics such as Lanier, Weinstein, & Brandt.)
'Wikimedia requested that because it is "disseminating knowledge", the operating company should receive charitable tax perks, stating its objective is to "aid and encourage people to collect, develop and effectively disseminate knowledge and other educational, cultural and historic content in the public domain or under a license that allows everyone to freely use, distribute and modify content... [blah blah]"'
Scare quotes, belittling phrases ('charitable tax perks'? seriously); the second quote is neutral, but one could be forgiven for not even noticing that due to the insert of 'blah blah'. A more charitable person would understand that all those terms are very specific and there for a reason. Of course, a more charitable person would be writhing in utter shame that they are Orlowski.
"Blah blah" = "More legalese follows".
Right. That's how we should interpret it? A neutral comment to the effect that the rest is boring and irrelevant? Because there are no more standard, less childish expressions to that effect? (Such as '...' or 'etc.')
I remember when I was a teenager, one of the most infuriating and insulting things I could say to my parents was 'blah blah'. I don't think this is a coincidence. 'blah blah' never means, in a hostile context like this, anything positive or neutral.
Maybe the drafters had specific reasons in mind when they employed these words, but they obviously failed to take into account what it would take to satisfy Inland Revenue when they used them. "Charitable tax perks" is certainly a term of colloquial art that could be used to generally describe the benefits received by any registered charity.
'charitable tax perks' is a term of colloquial art? We must read in very different worlds. In my world, when one speaks of 'perks', it's generally in close conjunction with phrases like 'fat cats' and 'string them up by the necks' and 'outrageous'.
Incidentally, "charitable tax perks" turns up exactly 4 hits - 2 based on Orlowski, and 2 from a personal site. I guess all the uses of this term of art are offline?
'"The production of an encyclopaedia is not the charitable advancement of education and has not been accepted as such in law... If the object [should] be the mere increase of knowledge it is not in itself a charitable object unless it is combined with teaching or education," Customs responded in declining the request.
Harsh, or what?'
Perhaps. But then, as an American unacquainted with British charity laws, this sounds to me like 'we've never supported encyclopedias, and we have no mandate to start now'; which while arguably unfair and silly isn't particularly harsh. 'Just doing my job, ma'am.'
Some Americans can be just as unacquainted with British ironic writing as with British charity laws.
'Ironic'. Yes, I'm sure that's what it is. I realize now that I've wronged our critics like Lanier/Weinstein/Brandt/Orlowski - 'twas all in good fun!
The result is certainly harsh, but that's what you get when you apply rules strictly, and legal precedent tends to favour a more traditional interpretation of "educational"
"The problem could be solved if, as everyone expects, Wikipedia becomes a commercial operation that doesn't need charitable status. Bono-backed VC company Elevation Partners has chucked $1.35m at Wikipedia, and the Mozilla Foundation provides a workable legal precedent: a non-profit with a commercial wing. License changes are currently being mooted."
This is actually my favorite paragraph in the entire piece. There's so much to like about it! There's a subtle touch in saying 'Bono-backed'
- it's utterly irrelevant, of course, but it immediately brings
associations of Hollywood and sneering liberals and ineffective social policies and aid expenditures and staleness. There's a foisting of views; 'everyone expects' Wikipedia to become a commercial operation? Indeed.
Innovation in education does smack of "sneering liberalism", and such talk is bound to add one more painful knot in conservative jockstraps.
"But for now, the fiddlers could find ways of making the operation look more edukashnul and that. We suggest Wikia UK establish a British School of Fiddling, in which the public can be tutored in the labyrinthine layers of bureaucracy required to have their edits to "the Encyclopedia anybody can edit" rejected."
And a final salvo. I take off some points here for invoking fiddling twice; it's not stylish, as it was already used in the lead. Three times in an article is just tedious. 'edukashnul' gets some points for having no apparent target - at least, I can't figure out who the spleen is directed at. The government? The chapter? The Foundation? Otherwise, good rhetoric in the figure of a School of Fiddling.
Could it be that traditional "edukashun" is the problem. That word alone strengthens my view that government is the real object of the criticism. You're just shooting the messenger.
Ec
I'd note that the *only* use of the word 'educational' (from which Orlowski's 'edukashnul' is derived) is in the quote from the Chapter.
Ray: in general, I'm disappointed with your commentary. You're engaged in all sorts of bizarre contortions to try to see Orlowki's usual anti-Wikipedia trolling (see [[Andrew Orlowski#Criticism of Wikipedia]]) as instead an anti-government screed - as if Orlowski would ever support Wikipedia or miss an opportunity like this! - and I really don't know why.
- -- gwern
On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/27/wikipedia_charity_not/
"Wiki-fiddling isn't a charitable activity, according to the UK tax man. Revenue and Customs is denying tax privileges that go with charity status to Wikimedia UK, or Wiki UK Limited, as it's officially registered."
Worth noting also is the quiet little redefinition - something isn't charitable activity unless it can get tax breaks.
The exact quote from "the UK tax man", which you include later in your email, is "The production of an encyclopaedia is not the charitable advancement of education..."
The "quiet little redefinition" took place by us Americans. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We Americans managed to fix a lot of strange things about the English language, such as their spelling of "encyclopaedia".