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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