On 03/08/2012 16:24, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 5:14 AM,
<wiki-list(a)phizz.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
bharris(a)wikimedia.org wrote:
This is inserting a conspiracy theory where one
does not exist.
The English Wikipedia community voted on the blackout and
directed it into existence, not the Foundation. We merely
facilitated.
The proposal was floated by Jimmy Wales on the 10th of december, 1
day after a Creative Commons Board meeting, on which he sits
alongside the mother-in-law of Sergy Brin (Google), and on which
sit other representatives of other internet mega-corporations that
derive profit from user uploaded contents much of which is pirated,
or who make money from advertising on pirate sites.
I don't know what "other representatives" you could be referring to.
You have two board members that are closely associated with or paid by
Google. One of which is a development manager for YouTube which we know
from the viacom case, originally built its business from copyright
infringing content, the scale of which was known by Google when they
bought YouTube. You have as vice-chair the mother in law of one of
Google's co-founders, a company that was fined $500 million for
profiting from illegal counterfeit drug sales. A company that embarked
on a massive scofflaw exercise in the scanning of copyright works in the
hope that they could build a de-facto monopoly by stiffing the majority
of copyright owners with side deal with a couple of large publishing
companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/technology/23google.html
Given that SOPA attacked a part of the Google revenue stream: profiting
from advertising on pirate and counterfeit good sites, and that SOPA had
no effect on US websites. Criticism of Google funded US based
organisations that worked to oppose legislation that did not affect
themselves but their sponsors is entirely justified.