Gabriel Beecham wrote:
He says he has done research finding that the foundation is breaking the law, and appears to have groomed "potential complainants" to file lawsuits against the Wikimedia Foundation in their respective states. I'm no legal person, so could anyone tell me whether what he is saying is correct, whether anything needs to be rectified, who he really is (in terms of a user), and how he can be dealt with?
What he is saying is not correct, and who he is, I don't really know, other than that he's most likely the same person as EntmootsOfTrolls, "24", etc. The writing style is essentially similar, and his uniform hatred of me and the Wikipedia project is identical.
As to the question he's raising -- whether we need to register in all the states, it's pretty much a gray area of the law. As I understand it, we are *not* soliciting people for donations -- to do that, we'd have to be approaching them, as opposed to them approaching us. And if we *were* soliciting people for donations, we would be doing it *here* in Florida. But there is apparently very little precedent in this area, because as a matter of fact, these laws are not always vigorously enforced anyway.
Nonetheless, I have said for a long time now that I think we should eventually get registered in all the states, as well as in any nations where this sort of things seems important, if for no other reason than to eliminate even the possibility of someone making this accusation.
The separate accusation that he made -- that we are not disclosing everything that we legally need to disclose to donors, is absurd. We don't just disclose everything that we legally need to disclose, we disclose just about *everything* period. The only thing that I do keep private is the personal information of contributors, which is not only within our rights, but is also the right thing to do.
--Jimbo