Hi MZ - I'm surprised by this, given that it clearly delineates that it doesn't impact community requests at all, and only applies to requests that come to the Foundation. It seems logical that there be a uniform process for routing those internally and this is an attempt to transparently tell the community what that process is. The alternative is to have no policy for handling it and make it up every time. Regardless, if you have specific concerns, perhaps you could lay them out at the talk page and we can figure out if it makes sense to modify or adjust the policy in some way? PB ----------------------- Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> Sender: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:13:47 To: Wikimedia Mailing List<wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: WMF Policy and Political Affiliations Guideline Geoff Brigham wrote: involved http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundati This appears to be an unprecedented power-grab by the office of the General Counsel. Was there any Board or community support for placing so much power in an unelected and unaccountable lawyer? MZMcBride _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

This appears to be an unprecedented power-grab by the office of the General Counsel.

What type of action was the SOPA blackout in January?

On Aug 2, 2012, at 5:45 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> 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.

Ah, interesting point. My read of this was that the guideline would consider an initiative requested by a non-WMF community or organization to be an "outside group", whereas an initiative from one or more WMF communities, or from the broader general WMF community, would not fall under these guidelines. The recent request for comment with respect to the Internet Defense League[1] would be an example of an initiate that would fall within this guideline, I think.

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 6:07 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: The community's decision to blackout a project would not be within this guideline, but any additional WMF resources would require legal and financial review. There are strict laws in the U.S. that limit when a non-profit organization may engage in political and legislative activity, and it is the General Counsel and CFA's duty to ensure that the WMF complies with those laws. The community has procedures for determining consensus for action, and most of the time the community can implement that action without any additional resources from the WMF.

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 6:07 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: The community's decision to blackout a project would not be within this guideline, but any additional WMF resources would require legal and financial review. There are strict laws in the U.S. that limit when a non-profit organization may engage in political and legislative activity, and it is the General Counsel and CFA's duty to ensure that the WMF complies with those laws. The community has procedures for determining consensus for action, and most of the time the community can implement that action without any additional resources from the WMF.

I'd suggest what you're struggling with may be the impression that someone very much *wants* Wikimedia or Wikipedia to lobby for political causes. I wouldn't even be surprised if the idea that Wikimedia should have a community advocacy department was suggested by some of Wikimedia's partners and sponsors. Basically, Wikipedia has enough traffic to be a top-ten website. So if Wikipedia says or does something, it's noticed by a heck of a lot of people. The job of the Advocacy Advisory Group seems to be to make sure that "the community" says the right thing. Several of the six decision types listed on the proposed policy page, e.g. "Collaborative Advocacy" (collaborating with another organization to take action on a particular policy or political question) and "Limited Trademark Endorsement" (permitting another organization to use the Wikimedia name and trademark to promote a policy or political cause), require neither board input nor wider community input, just consultation of the AAG. As I said on the proposed policy's talk page, that Advocacy Advisory Group is an odd thing. On the one hand, the proposed policy insists the AAG is a community organ, implying it is not under the Foundation's control. On the other hand, though, the proposed policy says the group is "managed by the Legal and Community Advocacy Department", which is part of the Foundation. So what does that mean? And who is in this group? Its name is hyperlinked to yet another mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy_advisors _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

On 3 August 2012 22:00, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: Andreas, I'm sorry, but you've been involved in Wikimedia projects for quite a while now. What in heaven's name would ever give you the idea that the WMF could possibly get itself organized enough to co-ordinate something like this with Google? Now, could you please get back to the subject, which is how the WMF should handle third party requests to participate in advocacy, and drop this whole Google/SOPA thing, or at least take it off this list? Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

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

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.

(warning, tl;dr!) ** *@Andreas - *I understand your sentiment, but in a reasoning way, I find I don't agree with that assessment. For what it's worth, I edit a lot on law - one of my GAs is a Supreme Court case, numerous others worked on, it's an area I like, and I tend to read full rulings like some read science fiction or fanbooks. It doesn't mean in any way I'm expert but I read draft legislation. So I'm not dependent on any WMF writer to assist on that. NPOV works well in articles with divided views, and suggests a good approach is to characterise the issue and the divisions. In that spirit, my attempt to fairly bridge the gap and explain where I see things diverging: 1. Some bring stolen goods to the party, we can agree. In this case that means that some people breach copyright in a severe way online, which can fairly be characterised as theft if one ignores technicalities such as the minority of countries that don't make it a crime. In the vast majority we can agree it's theft in all jurisdictions. So yes, theft takes place. We can agree it's significant, though in the context of global trade and dubious "facts"there's a big dispute about the impact. 2. *(Evidence: The UK govt review of copyright theft online, Hargreaves or something, I may have edited it, certainly read it, said of the various studies into online piracy that most were figures based on unproven assumptions, or plucked from the air, or something of that kind, and that not one study could be found that was actually reliable in the sense of unbiased fair and methodically rigourous conclusions)*. 3. Theft in general web-wide was never the reason or issue for the protests by Wikimedians, or the WMF's involvement. It was not at any time a purported reason why *_Wikimedians_ *objected through *_this_ *site.There was never a plausible claim that Wikimedian protest was even slightly motivated by a wish to retain the ability of other sites to continue crime. 4. As regards Wikimedia itself and its community, as far as I can tell, both have very strong views that theft (ie copyvio) should not be allowed on this site. I see no evidence that parts of the regular/established/core/active community have an agenda to improve our project's use, or ability to use, copyvio material, see no evidence anyone here tries to turn a blind eye to it. We already have community policies that set standards far higher than the law requires. 5. Is it therefore fair to characterize the objections to SOPA/PIPA as "we want to do illegal things, someone wants to stop us, and we don't want that"? I can't see how that's sustainable. 6. I have the impression your complaint is that Wikimedians may have protested on grounds that were (a) not well founded in that in your view, the suggested risks were inaccurate, and (b) in protesting they chose to overlook harm elsewhere which these laws could have improved. 7. I think it's fair to characterize the objections of individual users en masse and how they felt as, "We don't want to do illegal things, but illegal things may be done or claimed wrongly to be done, or actions threatened on the assertion of illegality. If this law passes, that could cause some things to be shut down for bad faith reasons or mistake without recompense, or legal concerns to have a chilling effect, and we don't want that"? 8. They could be correct or incorrect to have that concern. I'm looking here at what individual Wikimedians like me, supporting the protest, may have believed and felt. In other words, were Wikimedian community protesters acting from a good faith belief there was a real concern, or in bad faith to gain by pretence a means to allow crime to occur? I think the former. 9. As supporting evidence I also note that the objections were not to the basic princviple of cutting off piracy. They were to matters that would allow harm without good cause. It targeted DNS issues where the markup committee had admitted they didn't know what technical issues would arise. It targeted shut down without fair hearing, and immunity for bad faith or mistake, no matter the harm done. Those could have been fixed. In the alternative OPEN bill, they generally were. One can judge the protests' intent by the points protested about. Whether or not that concern was well-founded, it was a good faith concern by individual members of the community expressing concerns. From your complaints and descriptions, it's *not* that the projects offer things "without consideration" as you suggested first. We do expect and require consideration, such as attribution and license compliance in return (see above). It's *not* that we give on the basis of "No strings" and later make demands - see above, giving does not imply indifference and doesn't exclude the right to say "we see a problem here, please don't let that problem happen". It *isn't* that we are hosting a giant volunteer party and noticing some goods brought to be given away are stolen and we want to ensure that can continue - we have rigorous standards and there's no evidence people want to have looser ones or turn a blind eye to breaches. Your stated issues so far - that something was given and later had conditions added, or stolen material is covertly desired to be usable - really dont stack up. What I *_think_* your *real** *issue is, is that you feel the impact of SOPA/PIPA was exaggerated and it would not have had the stated effects, and you feel the natural and rightful concern of community members to protect freedoms and free speech and user-created sites, was manipulated or given "spin" to motivate action which protected rights that (in your view) werent at risk in the ways suggested. In the worst case scenario, you suggest such manipulation, or spin, was driven by large internet businesses and their links to WMF. So maybe your *real *question is, were the legal analysis and the proposed fears, significant/realistic, or were they manipulated, spun, and "sold" to community members. That's a fair question. *If the analysis was valid*then the community acted in good faith and with good reason. *If the analysis was invalid* then the community acted in good faith but was "sold" the idea on false or exaggerated grounds, perhaps to benefit others' business (in your suggestion). It comes down to the validity of legal analysis. What is *not *fair is suggesting *the protests by mass Wikimedians* was somehow intended either to support theft, or to impose demands related to material understood to ave been freely gifted with no strings. If that's close, then can you comment so far and we'll carry on. FT2 On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: And stall a them goodwill what you market the what at well in donating me not to that dolphins "We _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

We do everything in our power to prevent the problem, but it would be absolutely cost prohibitive to do it 100% with the difference being that fine grained, and this law gives you the right to shut us down if we can't hit 100%. We think on balance what we do is good even if something bad occasionally slips through, so we can't support that law. And indeed, since this strikes at the core of what we do and could shut us down entirely, we must do everything in our power to fight the law, including energizing those who use our services to speak up against it."

* Geoff Brigham opined otherwise, IIRC.*

Sarah, Well, for one I was not aware that there was a "reflection" about the blackout posted on Meta. A link would be appreciated. Thanks. Secondly, four or five months ago I would not have been aware of various events on the timeline that preceded the blackout. Third, this is an ongoing situation, as the subject of this very thread is the proposed policy defining when and how further action like that could be taken. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundation_Poli… Regards, On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Sarah Stierch <sarah.stierch(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

>Mind the gap! Support Wikipedia women's outreach: donate today

bharris(a)wikimedia.org wrote: 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.

On the 14th of December Creative Commons was also calling for a blackout/action over SOPA.

Whether you realize it or not you were manipulated by mega-corporations to stick it to the musicians, photographers, and authors, so that said corporations could better profit from the theft of their works.

On 03/08/2012 16:24, Mike Linksvayer wrote: You have two board members that are closely associated with or paid by Google. One of which is a development manager for YouTube

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:11 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: You mean, given the $500,000 Google donation Wikimedia received in November 2011, one month after the Italian Wikipedia's blackout, and two months before the English Wikipedia's SOPA blackout, and round about the time Wikimedia first made public statements denouncing SOPA? Good question. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l