[Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:

> You specifically contrasted regulations "as a corporation" with
> regulations "by virtue of its being a nonprofit corporation".  I
> responded to both.  You then quoted my response to the first, with
> information with respect to the second.

I'm still not sure what you're taking issue with here.

>> As for WMF's tax status, I'm not going to talk about that -- I simply
>> pointed out that 501(c) organizations are regulated.
>
> 501(c) *is a tax status*.  501(c)(3) is a subset of that tax status.

So? I gave you pointers to regs for 501(c)(3), (c)(4), etc.

>> I'm entirely comfortable with The New York Times Company (a
>> corporation) and its efforts to influence the outcome of elections
>> (e.g., through candidate endorsements; I wouldn't want to prohibit The
>> New York Times Company from political speech.
>
> And fortunately, Citizens United helped protect their right to do so.

That is certainly the ACLU's view (if I recall correctly), and I
appreciate that view, although I think the problem of the corrupting
influence of corporate expenditures remains, and I still think it's
possible, per the whole line of Supreme Court cases leading up through
Citizens United, to regulate the problem of election-targeted
expenditures constitutionally.  (In short, I slightly disagree with
ACLU's position, but only slightly.)

What this has to do with WMF or the Russian-language Wikimedians'
activism is still beyond me, however.


--Mike