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

[FT2]

Not least our public life-blood comes from the perception we're
independent, non-profit motivated, charitable, public welfare motivated,
grass-roots - not a "Silicon Valley giant". We have spent years explaining
we have just 75 staff and volunteer writers. We seek small donations to be
aligned to the public and avoid pressure (even if we wouldn't succumb).
That's our support. It means although we have some shared wishes and broad
alignments of interest, we must be very careful to think "outside the box"
somewhat on these issues. It's what we've done the last 11 years.

FT2

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 9:37 PM, James Alexander <jamesofur at gmail.com>wrote:

> Google (and facebook and twitter etc) are large corporate organizations
> with profits heavily on their mind (by law, they are responsible to their
> shareholders). While they clearly have good reasons to be opposed to SOPA
> and PIPA there reasons are not exactly the same as ours and in my opinion
> we would be hurting ourselves to rely solely on them for any kind of
> advocacy work we do ( work that is clearly spelled out in the strategy
> guide as important for issues like SOPA). A corporate group is going to try
> and get the best outcome for their shareholders and their company and that
> outcome is NOT necessarily the best outcome for us (for example exemptions
> for themselves but not websites like Wikipedia).
>
> An example is actually mentioned in the article (The OPEN act). The OPEN
> act is highly divisive, we don't know if we'll support it or not yet (or
> just 'not oppose' it) and we can't rely on google and others to align with
> what we we're thinking.
>
>