[Wikimedia-l] WMF Policy and Political Affiliations Guideline

[???]

On 03/08/2012 16:24, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 5:14 AM,  <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk>
> wrote:
>> bharris at 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.