[Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> On 11/07/12 00:32, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 10 July 2012 15:29, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> >> SOPA didn't threaten the existence of Wikipedia,
> >
> >
> > Geoff Brigham opined otherwise, IIRC.
>
> Yes, on the basis that "Wikipedia arguably falls under the definition
> of an 'Internet search engine'".
>
> <
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/
> >
>
> The definition was:
>
> "The term ‘Internet search engine’ means a service made available via
> the Internet that searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes
> information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet and on
> the basis of a user query or selection that consists of terms,
> concepts, categories, questions, or other data returns to the user a
> means, such as a hyperlinked list of Uniform Resource Locators, of
> locating, viewing, or downloading such information or data available
> on the Internet relating to such query or selection."
>
> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3261/text
>
> It's hard to see how Wikipedia could fall under this definition, but
> even if it did, what would be the consequences?
>
> "A provider of an Internet search engine shall take technically
> feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in
> any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or
> within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent the
> foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of
> such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct
> hypertext link."
>
> Geoff argued that we would have to manually review millions of links
> in order to comply with such a court order. But the definition of an
> "internet site" that would be specified under such a court order is:
>
> "[T]he collection of digital assets, including links, indexes, or
> pointers to digital assets, accessible through the Internet that are
> addressed relative to a common domain name or, if there is no domain
> name, a common Internet Protocol address."
>
> We already index external links by domain name or IP address for easy
> searching, and we have the ability to prevent further such links from
> being submitted, for the purposes of spam control. The compliance cost
> would be no worse than a typical [[WP:RSPAM]] report.
>
> Maybe SOPA was a "serious threat to freedom of expression on the
> Internet", and worth fighting against, but it wasn't a threat to
> Wikipedia's existence.
>
> -- Tim Starling



Thank you. Well said.