Re: [Foundation-l] We are the media, and so are you Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post
My read on this is that we did accomplish something for all time. We established that we matter. We meaning the larger we, not wikipedia google or any player, but the real body politic. SOPA PIPA are not dead, but they are in the long grass. ACTA it appears is going the same way (hopefully) because the European Union now includes countries who in living memory have experienced what it means for ones life to be controlled by nameless bureaucrats. The mass uprisings against ACTA in those countries reminded the Germans of their slightly less recent past, and that may or may not be able to tilt the balance. We need to keep a keen eye on all three, and do what we can to finally tilt ACTA decisively over. The law where we can do most good though, right now, is OPEN. We need not wait on events to unfold. Today we should focus on educating people that it is not a better written, more moderate law than SOPA or PIPA, but is in fact much worse, more draconian. Educate people about its flaws, and tell them to keep an eye on their legislators, so that if they make even the slightest move to make OPEN a reality, they will hear from somebody. And it will be those same people who got the lawmakers attention the last time. We. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] We are the media, and so are you Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post
(Sharing this oped published in the Washington Post today. Will be printed in tomorrow's paper) http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-are-the-media-and-so-are-you/2012/02/09/gIQAfNW81Q_story.html We are the media, and so are you By Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh, Thursday, February 9, 4:15 PM It’s easy to frame the fight over SOPA and PIPA as Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley —two huge industries clashing over whose voice should dictate the future of Internet policy —but it’s absolutely wrong. The bills are dead,thanks to widespread protest. But the real architects of the bills’ defeat don’t have a catchy label or a recognized lobbying group. They don’t have the glamour or the deep pockets of the studios. Yet they are the largest, most powerful and most important voice in the debate —and, until recently, they’ve been all but invisible to Congress. They are you. And if not you personally, then your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends and even your children. The millions of people who called and wrote their congressional representatives in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act were “organized” only around the desire to protect the Web sites that have become central to their daily lives. Change like this needed a fresh set of voices. The established tech giants may have newfound political influence, but their fights are still the same closed-door tussles over minor details. They have been at the table, and they have too much invested in the process to change it. More important, they are constrained by obligations to their shareholders and investors, as well as by the need to maintain relationships with their advertisers, partners and customers. Wikipedia,its users and its contributors don’t have the same constraints. We don’t rely on advertising dollars or content partnerships. The billions of words and millions of images in our projects come from the same place as our financial support: the voluntary contribution of millions of individuals. The result is free knowledge, available for anyone to read and reuse. Wikipedia is not opposed to the rights of creators —we have the largest collection of creators in human history. The effort that went into building Wikipedia could have created shelves full of albums or near-endless nights of movies. Instead it’s providing unrestricted access to the world’s knowledge. Protecting our rights as creators means ensuring that we can build our encyclopedias, photographs, videos, Web sites, charities and businesses without the fear that they all will be taken away from us without due process. It means protecting our ability to speak freely, without being vulnerable to poorly drafted laws that leave our fate to a law enforcement body that has no oversight and no appeal process. It means protecting the legal infrastructure that allowed our sharing of knowledge and creativity to flourish, and protecting our ability to do so on technical infrastructure that allows for security and privacy for all Internet users. We are not interested in becoming full-time advocates; protests like the Wikipedia blackout are a last resort. Our core mission is to make knowledge freely available, and making the Web site inaccessible interrupts what we exist to do. The one-day blackout,though, was just a speed bump. Breaking the legal infrastructure that makes it possible to operate Wikipedia, and sites like ours, would be a much greater disruption. Two weeks ago we recognized a threat to that infrastructure and did something we’ve never done before: We acknowledged that our existence is itself political, and we spoke up to protect it. It turned out to be the largest Internet protest ever. The full-time advocates of freedom of information, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, have been fighting for decades to help create the legal environment that makes our work possible. We cannot waste that effort by failing to speak in our own defense when that environment is threatened. It’s absolutely right that Congress cares about the content industry, recognizing its ability to innovate, to create wealth and to improve lives. But existing copyright enforcement laws were written in a world in which the information we had access to on a broad scale came from a few established media outlets. The players were easy to identify. They organized into groups with common interests and fought to protect those interests. The “content industry” is no longer limited to those few influential channels. The laws we need now must recognize the more broadly distributed and broadly valuable power of free and open knowledge. They must come from an understanding of that power and a recognition that the voices flooding the phone lines and in-boxes of Congress on Jan. 18 represented the source of that power. These laws must not simply be rammed through to appease narrow lobbies without sufficient review or consideration of the consequences. Because we
Re: [Foundation-l] We are the media, and so are you Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post
This is something I penned prior to reading this, whilst on holiday. It will probably be published somewhere eventually when complete, but seems directly relevant to this.. so have a draft. It may be lacking in places as a current work in progress. So we had a revolt on the internet; some large websites protested actual real life laws which ostensibly led them to be canned. At least, that is the story the media (and the activists) are telling you. Right now on sites such as Reddit this is being lauded as a great success, even those cautioning that it is not the last we will see of SOPA's proponents (a good position to take) are talking positively. The media loves the story and apparently big government has been put in their place. At this point any good sceptic likely smells a rat, and they are right to do so. Politics is a game, a game that politicians are bred to play. I know this because, having spent several years helping fight stupid law making, I've seen all the tricks. And, boy, have we been played. Don't get me wrong; I have enourmous respect for Reddit, its community and their ideals. It is very compelling that such a diverse group of people can come together on the internet and do good things, rather than just endless trolling and rick rolls. And I don't really mean SOPA, I mean the other stories you hear like I am poor and need help buying medication for my sick aunt and Reddit figures out if it is true or not, then raises $100,000 in a few days. Ok, so it's an exercise in groupthink. But who cares (and that is not sarcasm), the sick aunt gets the money. And then we have Wikipedia; one of the largest examples of narcissism and groupthink on the internet (I'm allowed, as an established editor, to say that because I am part of the problem - do you edit selflessly?). Right now there is much patting of backs on the effectiveness of the protest/blackout. This may not be a popular view, but it is pure navel gazing. SOPA is not the first example of internet lobbying/activism going wrong. Wikileaks, for example, was well positioned to whistleblow goverments and corporations. For a brief time they were the darlings of front line media.Then we saw messy internal politics, a guy unable to control his ego and some badly managed security issues. Some theorists reckon there was a conspiracy by the US government to kill of Wikileaks as a threat. I don't doubt they are write; in fact it's pretty much public knowledge that the government wanted them gone - but there was no need to send in the operatives when you have an arsenal of media friendly weapons. And the press dropped Wikileaks faster than... well, you get the picture. Then we have anonymous - a radical grass roots movement that, even though it did naughty things, was OK because it fed our narcissism (or perhaps media narcissism, it's hard to separate). When they posted messages against Scientology and hacked Tom Cruise's email[1] it was fine because Scientology is disturbing and dangerous anyway (the media are allowed to attack such establishments, even about powerful ones, if we socially agree - because if you sue, well, the Judge and jury are part of society too). Even when it expanded that was OK, because people doing not-socially-acceptable acts (like hounding some kid in America till she has to go into hiding) can be disclaimed from a movement with no organisation. Yet, now we have an unofficial spokesman for anonymous. Trust me when I say that guy isn't in it for the idealism; he is, of course, a narcissist out for attention. And the media love him, of course they do, because he is the overweight, slightly dorky Everyman that represents the exact image of the internet the want to feed us. And he has secret informations, the public lap that one up. It's the closest to seeing a real life spy that most of us will get. But where coverage started out positive, vigilante justice by people like you, we now have an entirely different picture. Now the story is about a slightly disturbing unknown movement acting as the modern anarchists, hitting bad corporations because they can. The facts are much the same as before, but we get the scary spin now because the public lost interest in the other version. And most recently we have the Occupy movement - a group that are closely tied to the internet and have made almost all of the same mistakes as those that came before (namely; lack of focus, pride in no leadership, etc.). And, so, now the media focus is no longer on what to do about the screwy financial system but on protesters being gassed and all of the legal efforts to kick them out of parks. For the 99% that is a much juicer story, after all it doesn't affect them like that finance stuff did. News at 10; people much prefer stories of police abuse than hearing about how damaged their own finances are. The protest has finally gotten a focus; they are protesting about their right to protest. I hope the irony is not lost on them. So, back
Re: [Foundation-l] We are the media, and so are you Jimmy Wales and Kat Walsh OpEd in Washington Post
Thomas Morton writes: Politics is a game, a game that politicians are bred to play. I know this because, having spent several years helping fight stupid law making, I've seen all the tricks. And, boy, have we been played. Dude, what am I? Chopped liver? I spent a huge part of my professional life as a Washington. What's more, I actually know Cary Sherman of RIAA. As in, I know him personally. We would recognize each other on the street. My headline should be obvious -- I don't think we we were played. Being effective in public-policy discussions is a learnable skill, it turns out. You learned it. Perhaps you will allow for the possibility I learned it too. Of course the media companies are spinning this. The spin that Google really is evil after all was an obvious if unimaginative choice. But rather than declare this to be Amateur Hour (r), can't you allow for the possibility that mass action got something right? Politicians didn't think internet mass action mattered. Now they think it does, and not just for fundraising or MoveOn or Tea Party campaigns. Copyright and technology policy in Washington has been deeply screwed up for some time. One path to fixing it it may be fine-tuning a phrase or excising it from a bad law. On the other hand, there was this guy named Martin Luther King who did not rule out mass action -- drew inspiration from, amazingly enough, a lawyer from India. Who know that lawyers could change public policy in a fundamental way, without playing an inside game? The inside is as much literal as figurative -- I'm talking about the Beltway, of course.) Right now, best guess among policy experts is that SOPA and PIPA are dead for the rest of the (political) year. That is not nothing. That is something. And while preaching about the importance of Beltway politics is almost always helpful, one occasionally comes across some piece of writing that that has a foot in both worlds. I assume you didn't enjoy the analysis written by this guy -- http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/02/07/guest-blogger-sunlight-got-it-wrong/ -- but he actually seems to make in that very piece. the point you believe is so revelatory and breathtakingly iconoclastic. Maybe you would find the piece interesting if you gave it another read. --Mike Godwin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
