PEBKAC, would be my guess.

Repeated from above: 26 minutes after I posted the above (according to the logs), the topic was split to remove Ottava's blatherings. One of Godwin's posts, a reply to Ottava, went into the split thread.

Because of the time difference, I am not at all sure whether we are all talking about the same post. Suffice it to say, the mods here are not deleting Mike Godwin's posts.

It might be in the tarpit. I'll put my mod hat on and write in italics:

[Angry and bait-ish stuff from brother Ottava moved to the tarpit in response to apparent "community concern". Please excuse our appearance as we bulldoze the gardens.]

You... um, didn't actually read the article, did you? At least I hope not.

Not that it wouldn't be a heck of a fun thing to do!

Godwin wouldn't stand a chance against Romney or Dr. Paul.

Wait, are we talking about possible presidents, or just some wacko California lawyer?

Looky, looky Reason has a Koch on Board. Those same people who fund the tea party as well as the effort to dismantle public education in Michigan. I guess it's not much worse than the Ron Paul Newsletter.

[/quote]

Sometimes you need to read the posts too. But then again you don't have to respond to every post and maybe shouldn't if you don't understand it well enough to know rather the poster is addressing you or someone else.
[/quote]

Oh, I did read the post. Still, I'm sure that any mistake was entirely my fault and not at all due to any lack of specificity on your part. Also, it was probably silly of me to look too hard at the topic header. Sorry for both. Thanks!


--Mike

So, um, yeah... you DIDN'T bother to read the actual article before commenting.

I'm surprised nobody here ever speculated about the strategic reasons one might be "cheeky" in response to an overreaching FBI letter of this sort. The answer lies in strategic goals -- specifically, I wanted to make sure the FBI complaint evaporated and never posed any threat of returning.

How does one do this? Well, publicly embarrassing the FBI early on is an excellent way to do this. To make the public embarrassment sting enough to compel FBI to back off, I had to make sure that the press coverage of their overreaching demand (not to mention their ridiculous editing of the statutory language in order to make the law seem less obviously inapplicable) was spread widely and deeply.

Now, one can certainly write a deadly earnest letter, with no humor in it at all, and make precisely the same legal points I made. That would have gotten the resulting exchange into perhaps 10 newspapers and journals at most, with some Internet coverage, but not that much. This might have been enough to make the FBI back off, but possibly not.

I knew from my years in Washington, DC, that the FBI is acutely aware of its public image and worries a lot about bad PR. I also knew from my days as a newspaper journalist that a "cheeky" response makes a better story than a simply earnest response (the latter might even be interpreted as whinging).

I knew from my own research, from the research of my law clerks, and from consulting outside counsel that WMF was sound on the law regarding Wikipedia's use of the FBI Seal. So I never felt I was taking any legal risk at all with regard to the FBI. Furthermore, everyone in WMF that I reported to, as well as WMF's communications chief, got to sign off on the letter before I sent it. I told everyone expressly that the goal here was to gin up press coverage, embarrass the FBI, and give them every incentive to drop the matter altogether (which in fact the FBI ultimately did). I even told folks that the letter had to be a little humorous to ensure press coverage.

So, sending the letter, worded as it was, was actually the product of a lot of thought and input. (I'd also told the New York Times well in advance of receiving the Larson letter that this might turn into an interesting story, and the Times reporter expressed interest in following the issue as it developed.) As it turns out, we got the precise results from the letter we intended to get. And cheekiness was a strategic choice, not a reflexive or hasty one.

I'm not surprised that everybody here speculated about how you were no longer with the WMF less than 3 months after your letter hit its home run.

The reason is that everyone here was under the impression that you are a lawyer, not a PR strategist (or "storyteller," in WMF-speak). Thanks for clearing up that confusion.

Not everyone. Kelly Martin said basically that years ago, and presented a good argument for it. (EDIT: Of course neither I nor she claim that he is not in fact "a lawyer" as in licensed to practice law.)

Found the quote (at least one of them):



Personally I'm skeptical of the part of this assessment suggesting Mr. Godwin is not a good lawyer. From my conversations he seems to be intelligent, and intelligence combined with graduating from law school is bound to lead to at least some lawyerly skills.

WMF has had very little legal trouble that we know about, even with the license changeover which must have been tricky.

Something must be going right.

Who told you that lawyers who handle cases don't take pains to shape the public perception of those cases?

Besides, the goal here was to make the issue go away -- a central responsibility for a lawyer defending a client. If using a PR strategy achieves the right legal result, then a lawyer would be irresponsible not to use it, in my view. I've used PR strategies for more than 20 years to defend people or to advance policy agendas, but it's a particularly one-dimensional point of view to imagine this is the only arrow in my quiver. It would be as if I said that "Cedric is nothing more than his postings on Wikipedia Review." I'm not quite so inhumane.

I have occasionally read Kelly Martin's assessment of my work and skills, Anthony. Very inventive, I must say.

For what little it may be worth, my successor, whose opinion I value, has been nothing but generous in his praise for the work I did and nothing but appreciative of the legacy (of very little legal trouble) that he inherited from me.

Not that I expect anyone on WR to agree with him -- if I came to Wikipedia Review for validation, I would be even stupider than I look.

You opened the door, counselor, so I'll bite: Why, then, did you come to the Review? I need not remind you that you are not under oath, so feel free to spin all sorts of fabulous excuses as I'm sure we won't believe anything you say.

Also, Mr. Godwin, would you be so kind as to persuade SlimVirgin to start posting here again? She's the life of the party.

Mike sent off two replies in short succession. He may not have realised they got combined into a single post, i.e. this one.

This contains both his answer to dogbiscuit, and the answer to lilburne which he later thought had disappeared.

Hi Mike, welcome to WR.

I wonder why you left it all behind, then. I'm guessing it came down to you wanting more pay, but Sue wanted to earmark that money for a few more "consultants" she knows from Canada.

So Godwin what was up with Video Professor? The ISP involved required an order to compel after a hearing in which the anons had a chance to be heard before they "gave up" anon info. WMF and EFF appeared to do nothing. Did you even show up in court for a single hearing in that matter?

Well, considering he's new to the internet and older folks have trouble with these things I guess we can all understand.

Thanks for that explanation, HRIP, I should have thought of it myself. Subsequent posts within a 10-minute window are combined automagically by the board software.

Dare I ask whether or not he's operating under some sort of "non-disparagement" agreement...? Those are becoming more and more common these days.

I personally never saw anything that showed conclusively (to me, anyway) that you were a "bad lawyer," bearing in mind that I'm not a legal professional myself. But in all fairness, it could easily be argued that you had a built-in unfair advantage - given that Wikipedia's prominence and name-recognition (not to mention Section 230 and the anonymity culture in general) might have acted as a kind of intimidation-factor for people who might otherwise have pursued legal action beyond the threatening-letter stage. Not much has happened recently to reduce that advantage, either (IMO).

I really can't talk about internal decision-making regarding that case. (Privilege, etc.) I'll refer you to my friend and colleague Paul Levy of Public Citizen for procedural details about the windup of the Video Professor case.

I can't speak for what EFF chose to do with regard to Video Professor -- I wouldn't be surprised if they filed an amicus brief in that case, regardless of whether they showed up to argue. I don't know that EFF ever took on a role that would have given them standing to argue the case.

As for me, I'm not admitted to practice law in Florida courts, and in fact I was working for WMF in the Washington, DC, area in fall of 2007 (just a few months) after I was hired. We eventually delegated local representation to Squire Sanders, but Squire Sanders was not one of our resources until late summer 2007, at the earliest. I don't doubt that WMF would respond to subpoenas differently now -- because, in fact, we started responding to subpoenas more proactively soon after I relocated to California along with the rest of WMF. That would be January 2008. I also implemented policies designed to make us less attractive as a target of litigants seeking information.

I should add that, as I recall, the Video Professor demands regarding WMF predate my actual assumption of duties at Wikimedia Foundation. And in the months between Brad Patrick's departure and my hiring, WMF had no legal representation at all. I'll answer more precise questions if you ask them, and link them to particular dates, provided that doing so doesn't entail revealing privileged information.



Nothing about a non-disparagement agreement, even if Geoff were bound by one, would prevent him from saying something critical to my face, or require him to be as complimentary as he has.

More later, if you need it. Got to go to a lunch meeting now.

Ah, yes, that would be about the time that a Florida court nearly held the WMF in contempt for failing to respond to a subpoena, and so the WMF (instead of resisting a discovery motion) merely rolled and handed over the IPs of over a dozen users? I seem to recall that the Board was a bit peeved about that one. It's not as if supervising the performance of local counsel and ensuring that they deal with issues assigned to them in a timely and appropriate manner is something that one would normally expect the General Counsel to be responsible for, whether or not he is licensed to practice law in the state in question.

The mere appearance at a hearing is not privileged as anyone in the courthouse could see and it is public record. But if you don't remember whether you where employed by WMF or not that is an answer in any event. We can assume you attended no hearings to protect anon Wikipedians.

Of course the General Counsel is responsible for supervising outside counsel. I didn't say otherwise. i supervised Squire Sanders, and approved their choices with regard to resolving a problematic situation that arose during the period in which WMF had no legal advice or representation at all. And, going forward, I put a new system in place, and the problem never arose again.





Not impossibly, Kelly believes WMF had all legal matters entirely squared away before I showed up and screwed everything up.

If so, that's the first time I've heard that claim.

Interesting response. I was expecting you to assert privilege and thereby refuse to respond. Thank you for confirming that, while you were its legal counsel, the WMF did, in fact, hand the IP addresses of multiple editors to a third party without first confirming that the editors in question had engaged in conduct inconsistent with Wikimedia's policies, as is expected by most members of Wikimedia's community and at least suggested by the so-called privacy policy. Always nice when I can get confirmation of an unconfirmed rumor.

No matter; that occurred years ago, and in any case you are no longer Wikimedia's counsel, so I'm sure the community no longer needs fear that their personal information will be bandied about so carelessly.

On an entirely unrelated matter, I'm curious where MadRiver, your current shindig, stands on SOPA. As I understand it they're in the content distribution business (although to be honest information about what MadRiver actually does, if anything, is very hard to come by). In any case, most of the businesses in that sphere are at least passively, if not actively, supporting SOPA. Meanwhile, your old friends at the WMF, and of course at the EFF, are aggressively opposing it. So I'm curious where they stand, where you stand, and if this is creating any difficulties for you, either in terms of your personal beliefs or in terms of your professional ethics.

In legal contexts, "appearance" has a different meaning than in normal colloquial English. You seem to have shifted from (a) an implication that I should have showed up at the hearing and argued against the subpoena to (b) the implication that I should have shown up just to sit in the court room and do nothing. This is an odd view of what my role should have been. No doubt if I had attended the hearing and not spoken (not being admitted to practice before the Florida courts), you would be criticizing me for having spent WMF money to fly me to Florida to do nothing but watch.

It seemed prudent not to spend WMF money for something that would not have been particularly productive (having me physically present in the court room).

Perhaps in your own law practice you make different choices. If so, I respect that choice, counselor.

I'm on the record as opposing SOPA, and Mad River, while not formally engaged in the SOPA debate, has supported my work against SOPA, which mostly involves legal consultations with opponent stakeholders about how to fight effectively against SOPA. (And the details of my involvement with SOPA oppoents is, yes, privileged.) You can probably see my public opposition to SOPA on my Twitter feed or LinkedIn feed.

There are a number of Wikimedians who can confirm that I consistently protected user privacy rights to the greatest degree possible, once I was able to put appropriate procedures in place. Unfortunately, I cannot disclose their names to you.

I know you're invested in attacking me, and that's okay -- everybody needs a hobby -- but understand that, yes, I'm limited in the extent to which I can defend myself against those attacks, since defending against them would violate my continuing legal and ethical obligations. Whether it's ethical for you to take advantage of my limitations in this forum is up to you and others here to decide.

I will say that, generally, you have mischaracterized the decision-making process regarding the Video Professor case.

Again, I do love the implication that everything regarding WMF's handling of legal challenges was just fine in the period when WMF had no lawyer at all. Then I showed up and everything went to hell, eh?




Nothing about a (presumed) non-disparagement agreement requires Geoff to be complimentary to me. In fact, nothing about a non-disparagement agreement prevents Geoff from criticizing me directly.

I will say that, generally, you are an idiot, insofar as I don't even know what the Video Professor case is and have never to my knowledge said anything about it. But I shouldn't expect you to check facts before firing off your mouth.

The SOPA question was pure curiosity, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you for answering.

Sorry for my confusion. Apparently you're confused as well, since you seem to be interpreting something I said about the Video Professor case as some kind of admission regarding another case. Perhaps you should state the name of the case you're talking about -- that would help me avoid confusion on my end.

I'm pleased to be such an entertaining "idiot" that you find it amusing to attack me. Is this because you're unwilling to spend your time challenging non-idiots? If so, I understand entirely.



Thanks from me as well. Although I've read WR for a while, this is my first experience posting here.

It is possible that the case in question is the case commonly known as the "Video Professor Case". I don't know, nor do I care. My source within the Foundation did not deign to share the case caption with me, just the timeframe. That you were Wikimedia's general counsel during that timeframe is undisputed. As to the rest, we shall merely agree to disagree.

It would be my preference, to be honest, that you go away. I don't believe that you plan to participate in this forum with the intent to contribute to the meaningful criticism of Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and related entities. That would represent a complete about-face from the predilections and behavior you have demonstrated for decades. Feel free to prove me wrong, though.

I don't know why this hasn't been asked before, but here it is: Mr. Godwin, why the fuck are you here?

You've made it clear that you don't care what we say about you (and/or are amused by it), you're no longer on the payroll of the WMF, and you probably have all sorts of options available to you when it comes to ways to spend your free time. So really, why are you here?

General Counsel and In-House Counsel would be permitted special appearances in matters concerning their companies, especially if local counsel also appeared. Check the court rules. A day trip to Denver would hardly be wasted travel. I am sure you have spent more on travel on vacuous award dinners. WMF had an important interest in demonstrating to it users that their anon status would not be given up for lack of caring. Just like the ISPs did for their customers when they did attend and defend. It looks like you never filed an appearance, requested a hearing or had local counsel do the same. You are blowing smoke Counselor.

Listen not to the Philistines, Mike.

I appreciate you joining and posting here.
You write MOAR BETTAR than most of the rest of this gang of infidels and the subjects you've written about here are more interesting than the usual fluffer-banter.

Please stay. Please write more.

I just assumed it was because this is where all the "cool people" hang out...?

Then again, it's been demonstrated in the case of Larry Sanger and others that if you leave the WP hierarchy, or "orbit," or whatever, for almost any reason, the Wikipedia people (or "community," if you will) are going to look on you with suspicion and quite possibly ostracize you, even if you're mostly supportive of what they do. Unless you simply disappear altogether, which probably isn't an option for Mr. Godwin here. I'm certainly not suggesting Mr. Godwin is some sort of narcissist when it comes to criticism of himself, as I don't think he is, but WR is probably the most expedient (and maybe even the best) means available of answering critics of his work there, both here and on Wikipedia itself. And if you're a lawyer, you're usually better off answering the critics, if your actions are (or were) defensible at all.

Besides, we're fun people, right? We like to make jokes and wisecracks and stuff, so why not?

Yes, please stay Mike, ignore the occasional poke. The excitement is unbearable.

As for the rest of you.......in re. the Video Professor case, Encyclopedia Dramatica to the rescue!......and have a nice day!........

Well, if your "source within the Foundation" won't tell you what the name of the case is, or who or what was involved in it, but it wasn't the Video Professor case (or maybe it was, you now suggest). In general, it's hard to gesture vaguely at a case and then ask someone to defend his actions regarding it -- I dealt with dozens of legal matters simultaneously in my first months at Wikimedia Foundation, and many hundreds during my entire tenure there. Is your source a lawyer, or are we not allowed even to know that?

I'm startled and oddly pleased that you have either (a) followed my career "for decades" or (b) spent time researching "decades" of my career! It is flattering that I, a mere "idiot," have merited your researching "decades" of my work.

Got bored during my holiday break. I thought it might be fun to show up and let you insult me to my face. I notice you have worked through all the old material (Kelly Martin has had to dig into 2007 to find something to throw at me). Surely there's new stuff?

First of all, I don't spend money on travel to award dinners, and never did. If you want me to show up at an award dinner, you have to pay my expenses at minimum.

Second, I don't dispute that I could have arranged to be "permitted" a "special appearance" (see how you've switched to the legal meaning of "appearance" again? Slippery! But I would have done so
only if it we had had local counsel and if my appearance would have added something useful to challenging the subpoena. Neither was the case.

Many non-lawyers have the quixotic notion that lawyers fly around and show up all over the country
to defend cases or argue them. I can understand how you might get that notion from popular culture (particularly TV lawyer shows). But in reality lawyers supervise or respond to cases (or choose not to respond) at a distance, all the time.

Lurking behind your comments (and Kelly's, maybe) is the notion that the General Counsel was in a position to serve as a defense fund for volunteer editors in general. That has never been the case,
although I made a point of trying to find outside counsel to defend volunteer editors in legal cases from time to time. (On more than one occasion I arranged for EFF or Public Citizen to defend individuals -- that's why it's useful that I have maintained collegial relationships with those organizations.) This is a policy my successors (there are three lawyers in the legal department now) have continued to follow.

My job, of course, was to defend the Wikimedia Foundation during a time of particular abrupt transition and growth, not to serve as a kind of public defender for the Wikimedia community members, who may be in a different legal situation than the Foundation is. I believe that such defense work is valuable, and I've done it from time to time both before and after my tenure at WMF, and WMF leadership supported me in my efforts to ensure, going forward, that individual volunteers were protected, usually by identifying outside resources and colleagues they could turn to.

What does one need to do to attain promotion to Brigadier Counsel?

Does anyone actually care what is said here?

Especially your contributions?



Sauce dear boy, sauce.

It refers to a bottle of Heinz Ketchup Kelly managed to nick on an information gathering trip

I think to be promoted to Brigadier Counsel, I'd have to prove that I've adopted the Kelly Martin Rule: If You Can't Say Something Un-nice About Wikipedia, Don't Say Anything At All.

You're a cheeky one, asking me to reveal information about my sources like that. I've never told Jimbo who my sources in the Foundation are; what makes me think I'd tell you?


I've never thought this, of course; I am not stupid. However, many run-of-the-mill Wikipedians (being, frankly, stupid) do seem to labor under the misapprehension that Wikimedia General Counsel is, or ought to be, their personal attorney, and that if they get sued over their Wikipedia meanderings, Wikimedia ought to defend them as they were the beneficiaries of their labors. Who am I to disabuse them of that notion?

I stopped focusing on personalities around that time, having realized that Wikipedia's problems weren't so much due to a good idea being handled badly by the wrong people, but instead a wrongheaded idea altogether. Crowdsourcing only works if you lower the bar on "work" really really low. While most people don't recognize it, eventually we'll realize that Wikipedia is easily the worst thing to happen in the field of knowledge creation and knowledge management in the last century.

You wouldn't have any, um, specific incidents in mind, would you?.......

Yeah sorry about that. That's just the tone around this place: extreme anger over events that happened years and years ago. Enjoy the hostility.

If I had to think of the one thing I'm most pissed off about, it would be the WMF promoting the use of Wikipedia in public schools while at the same time knowing it's filled with hardcore pornography (Rope Hell, just for example). How do you live with yourself, knowing that you worked to distribute porn to kids?

I think that using Mr. Godwin as a whipping-boy for all of the perceived failures of Wikipedia and/or the Wikimedia Foundation is rude and pointless. He no longer works for the WMF, and (as he has pointed out) any truly salacious details, if there are any, would be covered by privilege.

I have an honest question for Mike, and one that I hope is not rude: What did you observe while working with the WMF that would indicate that they are a careful and responsible steward for a public website that has become disproportionately (or perhaps uniquely) important in information delivery on the Internet?

I think that Mike's observations on the effectiveness of Sue Gardner's leadership, the depth and intelligence of the WMF's strategy vis. Wikipedia (if any), the influence of Jimbo Wales on the organization, and similar topics would be illuminating, if he were to choose to share it.