Not least our public life-blood comes from the perception we're
independent, non-profit motivated, charitable, public welfare motivated,
grass-roots - not a "Silicon Valley giant". We have spent years explaining
we have just 75 staff and volunteer writers. We seek small donations to be
aligned to the public and avoid pressure (even if we wouldn't succumb).
That's our support. It means although we have some shared wishes and broad
alignments of interest, we must be very careful to think "outside the box"
somewhat on these issues. It's what we've done the last 11 years.
FT2
On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 9:37 PM, James Alexander <jamesofur(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Google (and facebook and twitter etc) are large
corporate organizations
with profits heavily on their mind (by law, they are responsible to their
shareholders). While they clearly have good reasons to be opposed to SOPA
and PIPA there reasons are not exactly the same as ours and in my opinion
we would be hurting ourselves to rely solely on them for any kind of
advocacy work we do ( work that is clearly spelled out in the strategy
guide as important for issues like SOPA). A corporate group is going to try
and get the best outcome for their shareholders and their company and that
outcome is NOT necessarily the best outcome for us (for example exemptions
for themselves but not websites like Wikipedia).
An example is actually mentioned in the article (The OPEN act). The OPEN
act is highly divisive, we don't know if we'll support it or not yet (or
just 'not oppose' it) and we can't rely on google and others to align with
what we we're thinking.