Bob, the WMF is potentially vulnerable to provisions in SOPA/PIPA through
many avenues:
1) It hosts a large number of servers overseas in order to serve the other
Wikimedia communities. This could cause it to be interpreted as one of
those "rogue foreign sites" and subject it to censorship.
2) It has a large number of domain names it uses or that are associated
with it that are on foreign registries (e.g. wikimedia.de) that could cause
it to be interpreted as one of those "rogue foreign sites" and subject it
to censorship.
3) The encyclopedia itself is highly reliant on external sources, many of
which are hosted overseas, and which could start disappearing under
concerted censorship campaigns by people or corporations with vested
interests. Imagine the Church of Scientology successfully getting DNS
entries for sites critical of Scientology blocked, and then turning around
and white-washing the Wikipedia articles by removing lots of facts which
can no longer be sourced.
I don't think this list is appropriate for an involved discussion of the
pros/cons of SOPA/PIPA, but your views on the matter are well outside the
technological mainstream, which by and large does see grave dangers from
SOPA/PIPA. It's not a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of
Wikipedians were in favor of a Wikipedia blackout.
Some more info here:
http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:15 PM, <bob(a)racepacket.com> wrote:
Luke:
If that is your test, I would feel better if WMF had a policy that said,
"No blackouts unless the existence of Wikipedia is threatened."
If you read the Senate bill you can see that is not the case now.
As a US website, Wikipedia is liable for contributory copyright
infringement now, but this does not threaten its existence.
If Wikipedia moved offshore, the bill would allow a court to order it to
take technically feasible steps to remove links to a priate website. (We
have an external link blacklist already.) So, that is not the threat.
Wikipedia has no plans to promote pirate websites from offshore. It does
not process money for repayment to pirate websites.
Unless the Justice Dept and Federal judges go crazy, where is the
existential threat? I think we need more rational discourse and less
passion in all of this. Reading through the RFC does not instill
confidence in Wikipedia decision-making process.
Thanks,
--Bob
The difference is those wars did not pose an imminent threat to the mere
*existence* of Wikipedia, unlike SOPA and PIPA.
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