[Wikimedia-l] WMF Policy and Political Affiliations Guideline

[Yann Forget]

Hi,

Man, what a talent for story telling! But I don't think you story
represents anything close to WP. First comparing copying digital
content illegally with stealing cakes is a very bad analogy. That's
what the industry wants us to believe, and you falled by the trick.

Then I don't think people here are misinformed as you says. You may
question that the blackout was the best strategy, but there was a
public debate and vote about it.

Finally, I don't think there is anything unethical about fighting against SOPA.
Quite the contrary IMO.

Yann

2012/8/3 Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com>:
> 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.