Bullshit. Commons contains thousands of images snatched from Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa,
usually taken with no attempt to verify ownership or permissions. I even know which admins
are doing this, and have been doing this for years.

If Geoff really was so smart, he wouldn't work for Jimbo's Folly.

If Geoff really was so smart, he wouldn't work for Jimbo's Folly.

Whenever someone from corporate management, any corporate management, tries to blow sunshine up everyone's patooty with rosy, general statements like this, the way to respond is asking for specifics: Exactly what measures does the WMF take to ensure there are no copyright violations in its projects? Is the number of violations found each year measured and recorded? If so, what are the numbers per year? Is copyright violation oversight incorporated into the WMF's 5-year plan? If not, why not? How much does the WMF spend each year on copyright infringement oversight? How many personnel are assigned to the issue? Are their performance evaluations based on their performance in this area? and so on...

Restored: Dow Lohnes.

You restored a G11 "blatant advertising: spam" article? When should we expect your AN/I hearing?

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=%22dow+lohnes%22

http://www.google.com/search?tbs=ar%3A1&tb...22dow+lohnes%22

There should be enough sources to establish notability in the eyes of Wikipedians.

Trigger

I believe that we should act sooner. Currently, this proposing is advising us to wait until the bill passes through both Houses of Congress before acting. I believe that this is too risky. If the bill passes through both Houses, then Wikipedia's fate shall be left in the hand of a single individual. Let's send a strong message to Congress and its constituents first. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 02:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

While Geoff doesn't quite come out and say this (he says parts of it, but it's rather buried in his text), it appears that this statute as presently proposed has no applicability to Wikipedia. We are not a foreign site, and we are not an internet search engine. We do not in response to a query list sites elsewhere on the internet; we list our own pages. We don't even have a google option. Accordingly, if we were to strike, we would be striking in sympathy with other sites, rather than because of a direct threat. That would be a bad idea, because then we have lowered the bar for action, which will take place whenever someone can pull in off the net sufficient support (say a verdict goes the wrong way in some criminal trial, or that death penalty is really bad isn't it, or let's go with that old chestnut, social justice).--Wehwalt (talk) 08:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

No comment (other than to note that Wehwalt is a lawyer):

Godwin's replacement speaks:

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-s...-and-wikipedia/

Basically SOPA won't affect them at all, they are shilling for Google.

Just in: a group letter, signed by the high nabobs of the internet, sent to Congress.

Please note that Wales is calling himself "founder of Wikipedia" again.

Just in: a group letter, signed by the high nabobs of the internet, sent to Congress.

Please note that Wales is calling himself "founder of Wikipedia" again.

YouTube’s posting of its copyrighted works, e-mails among the video site’s three primary founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawad Karim, demonstrate the debates the trio had over how to handle unauthorized content. The e-mails, from the first year of YouTube’s existence, detail clear concerns and veer to outright indifference among the founders and about how it should handle the issue. For the most part, Hurley is mostly worried about creating ill will among large media companies he hoped would pay “big money” to acquire YouTube.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-youtube...uggles-over-co/

You restored a G11 "blatant advertising: spam" article? When should we expect your AN/I hearing?

Anyone know why this doesn't seem to show up?

Geoff's blog post makes Godwin look like a child by comparison - he's a smart cookie.

At bottom, this is a political fight between the overwhelming majority of law-abiding Americans, companies and institutions hurt by rampant piracy versus a small minority of special interests who profit or benefit from the convenience of unfettered piracy, and a small minority of techtopians who politically oppose enforcement of property rights online as a threat to transparency, sharing, freedom of speech and democracy.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcleland/2...ecially-google/

Google is the only public opponent that is an admitted criminal aider-and-abettor of piracy via rogue websites. Remember, in August, Google admitted to knowingly and repeatedly violating Federal criminal laws against the “unsafe and unlawful importation of prescription drugs” via the promotion of rogue websites for years, in a criminal non-prosecution agreement; Google also paid a near record $500m criminal forfeiture penalty.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcleland/2...ially-google/2/

And better yet:

Exactly, Lilburne. Which is why it is generally a safe bet that if the Wikimedia Foundation rallies around some cause in the real world, one is more likely to be choosing the more ethically high-minded path by selecting the path not followed by the WMF. I knew I supported the SOPA legislation the moment Jimbo started yammering dramatically about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vil..._early_2012_RfC

Here's the proposed plan of action.

Action (blackout): All requests are answered with a black page. The page is semi-protected Wikitext. Once the page is displayed, a cookie is set which prevents its display again. Exact wording to be decided, but it hits the following points:

Are they seriously suggesting that they are going to be adding tracking cookies for political purposes?

So users of WP with US IP addresses will see a banner for up to a week and black page, once, on the day of the "blackout"? That's it? That'll show 'em not to mess with WP!

Knowing how popular that mess is, just denying a Googler looking for quick info, once, is all they need to do. I would not be surprised if the single blank page causes a shitstorm of publicity, 4chan threads, hackers trying to break things, etc. to "punish" Wikipedia for not being there. Every time WP goes down, even for one hour, the squawking starts.

So users of WP with US IP addresses will see a banner for up to a week and black page, once, on the day of the "blackout"? That's it? That'll show 'em not to mess with WP!

In case you hadn't heard.......

Jimbo posted this on his Twitter today.
And got tons and tons and tons and tons of favorable publicity.
And, apparently, more WMF donations ensued.

"Huge balls"? How pathetic. Anyone who knew his REAL history would conclude he is a castrato.

Anyone who knew his REAL history would conclude he is a castrato.

Including all his girlfriends?

In case you hadn't heard.......

Jimbo posted this on his Twitter today.
And got tons and tons and tons and tons of favorable publicity.
And, apparently, more WMF donations ensued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...on_r.e._GoDaddy

Dumping GoDaddy wasn't Jimbo's idea. Here's some background.

Dow Lohnes is not registered with the U.S. Senate as representing the Wikimedia Foundation. Neither is Dow Lohnes so registered with the U.S. House.

DOW LOHNES GOVERNMENT STRATEGIES LLC WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION, INC. 316013-1005332

392500056 Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2011

Jimbo answers, but not before scolding Cla68 for asking such a "hostile" and "bad faith" question!

Dow Lohnes is not registered with the U.S. Senate as representing the Wikimedia Foundation. Neither is Dow Lohnes so registered with the U.S. House.

Sounds to me like Jimbo remembered the name of the firm that Godwin told them they should work with, but that the WMF hasn't actually hired them yet, but Jimbo wanted to sound like the Big Man on Capitol Hill, so he started dropping phrases like "our paid lobbyists" when he really meant to say "that lobbying firm that Godwin mentioned we ought to consider working with", because "our paid lobbyists" sounds so much more mature.

No Wikipedia article about Dow Lohnes. Must be an insignificant, non-notable firm without any substantial accomplishments. After all, there's a Wikipedia article about Ponyta and Rapidash, and they never successfully lobbied a single case for their clients!

Or, it's possible that the WMF only hired Dow Lohnes in the past 44 days:

WMF's hiring of Dow Lohnes is public now, as a trivial Google Search can confirm.

http://www.dowlohnesgov.com/politico_wikim...t_on_sopa_pipa/

Bastien Guerry - bzg at altern.org
Fri Jan 13 13:27:23 UTC 2012

A nice side-effect of such a black-out will be to send GLAM
institutions this message: "Don't use Wikipedia as a storage
service, use your own websites and free licenses instead."

I would not spend time, energy and money on a service that
can block my contents without even warning and/or asking me.

Especially if I'm a public service, which is often the case
for GLAMs.

--
Bastien

BTW, is a charitable organization that exists on donations allowed to go on strike?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOP...itiative/Action

It's nice to see something solid finally happening.

Stuff like this is a welcome warning.

Now do you see what happens?

So is your site joining the blackout? That would really have a major effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...ence_by_the_WMF
I don't like the amount of control the WMF has over the proposal. What really pisses me off is Prodego's response to my concerns.

Accusations of interference by an encyclopediadramatica admin and GNAA defender. Lol. Selery (talk) 04:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...ence_by_the_WMF

I don't like the amount of control the WMF has over the proposal. What really pisses me off is Prodego's response to my concerns.

It's ad-hominem day on Wikipedia again......

For those of you who keep track of such things, Billinghurst is from Australia, NuclearWarfare is from the US, and I am from Canada.