[Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Milos Rancic]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 7:58 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, I'll bite.  This is just my opinion and based on SOPA in the United
> States and what our government represents.

Thanks! I am responding as a non-cognitivist moral skeptic nihilist.

> We have freedoms and we have liberties.  Freedoms are guaranteed in our
> Bill of Rights and they are fundamental to our existence.  Liberties are
> granted by law.  Politics being the interaction of people deciding what is
> best for the people.

I really don't care about your Bill of Rights.

> Laws and legislation libertize our freedoms.  We have freedom of speech,
> but it's regulated to an extent.  We have freedom of assembly, but there
> are laws requiring permits.  We have a right to bare arms, but there are
> gun control laws.  We take these freedoms and move them to the political
> realm, where we control each other with them.  These things are not really
> freedoms, they are not truly philosophical ideas of things that can be free
> because they deal with just humans.

I really don't care about your laws and legislation.

> Knowledge is not political.  Knowledge is free.  Other animals learn.
>  Plants learn.  They share knowledge among each other.  Learning and
> education is something that no matter how much humans may try to
> politically restrict or influence, it is impossible. Even the dystopian
> classics like *1984* and *Fahrenheit 451* maintain this virtue.

It depends of your definition of "political". If biological evolution
is a part of knowledge, it's political for significant specter of US
population.

> When we black-out one of our projects, we remove our ideal and the
> fundamental principle that we support the freedom of knowledge.  What we do
> it move the idea into the human realm, where we care about things like
> regulations and how it relates to "what is ours."  None of it is ours.  We
> release it under free license.

That's too much for my state produce by rakija.

> To claim that we have a responsibility for what we write is contrary to the
> notion of fully submitting it for reuse and/or modification, unless what
> was written was inappropriate by community standards.  When we take the *Atlas
> Shrugged* stance of taking our ball and going home to fight politics and
> regulation, we have done a disservice to both mankind and the idea of
> knowledge.  We may have copyright, but we don't own a thing that we have
> done.  It is not ours to take away.

As a non-cognitivist moral skeptic nihilist, I agree with you. In the
same sense as I don't see anything wrong in activating atomic bomb
below your or my city.

However, if we agree that there is a common interest between you and
me, then we are both responsible for the consequences of what we are
doing. Knowledge liberates people. In oppressive regimes (which is
equal to the whole Earth; maybe except Iceland), liberated people
cause troubles. And we are responsible for those troubles.

> When we black-out one of our projects in protest of politics, we are
> protesting business and money.  Those are what drive our global political
> systems, and these are things that we eschew.  SOPA and other such laws
> have to do with national attempts to regulate copyright on the internet.
>  I'm still not clear, despite all the arguments that I have read, that this
> applies to websites that release content under free license and take due
> diligence to remove copyright violations, because we do not believe in
> issuing copyright for our intellectual property.

I don't care about your business and money.

> When we use our websites for political protest, we are a level below our
> idea.  Our idea is above politics.  To put our idea into politics
> diminishes its power.  We provide information for knowledge and education.
>  A black-out causes awareness, not education.  While politicians may be
> influenced by the media buzz about the black-outs, it is not because of
> people that the legislation gets put away.  It's about the money. The
> legislation will return in a different form in the future.  Shall we just
> continue to black-out?  We lose our teeth and some dignity each time we do
> so.  Only our ability to educate will change the future in the politics of
> knowledge.

As mentioned above, our idea *is* politics.

> Keep knowledge free.  All the time.

As well as people are.

BTW, sorry for seemingly short answers. However, your moral prejudices
don't give me anything else as an option.