[Foundation-l] Politico: "Wikimedia foundation hires lobbyists on sopa, pipa"

[Philippe Beaudette]

You trust GOOGLE's interests to align sufficiently with ours, to the 
extent that you're willing to cede government affairs to them?

pb

On Sun Jan 22 12:48:50 2012, geni wrote:
> On 22 January 2012 18:00, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm worried that we may be getting in trouble.
>>> I don't know about US laws, but are charitable organizations allowed
>>> to meddle in political lobbying?
>>>
>>> I'd appreciate if more knowledgeable people could give us some light.
>>
>> It's perfectly allowed, and we're allowed to take positions on
>> specific bills - it is just that lobbying cannot be a 'substantial
>> part' of the WMF's activities unless it switches its charity type.
>> (Googling around, I was reading
>> http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNumber=12202
>> and http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicp97.pdf )
>>
>
> What is highly questionable is if it a remotely worthwhile use of
> money. If Google's lobbyists can't impact SOPA and the like what makes
> the foundation think our can?
>
>