[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

Sure. Most of the people involved in policy decisions for WMF back then are
still around, so a researcher who wants to know what happened and why can
ask them.

Mike

On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 6:04 AM Peter Southwood <
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net> wrote:

> Are these “facts of the matter” available for evidence focused rational
> consideration?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> *From:* Mike Godwin [mailto:mnemo...@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 30 August 2021 02:30
> *To:* Andreas Kolbe
> *Cc:* Wikimedia Mailing List
> *Subject:* [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion
> article to check...
>
>
>
> Andreas writes
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 11:12 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> But unless I am totally misreading you, your attitude sounds a lot like
> "Why should anyone care (or have cared) about Croatian and all these other
> languages spoken in some countries at the other end of the world?" If that
> does reflect your sentiment, then your mindset seems very much out of tune
> with WMF thought today.
>
>
>
> The most generous assessment of this gloss is that you are, in fact,
> totally misreading me. The less generous assessments I leave to the
> rhetorically inclined reader.
>
>
>
> I am not sure you are actually interested in an answer here, but what I
> did do, for what it's worth, was to make sure that the WP Signpost and WP
> Kurier covered the story when it first broke, mention it repeatedly over
> the years in my writing on WO and in the Signpost, as well as in
> correspondence with journalists and academics, and submit the
> aforementioned idea to the WMF – to have experts review human rights
> topics' coverage in Wikipedia language versions that may be subject to
> undue political influence, and publicly report the results. I think that's
> about all you could have reasonably expected me to have done here.
>
>
>
> I also think it is reasonable to expect you not to default to presuming
> things about the motives of WMF personnel in the absence of evidence. But
> that's me--I'm evidence-focused.
>
>
>
> The fact of the matter is that for about a decade, one of Wikipedia's
> top-50 language versions promoted extremist content, with the WMF's full
> knowledge. That is Not A Good Thing, whether you work for the WMF or not,
> and you have given no discernible reason why what was done this year could
> not have been done years ago, when the WMF was first made aware of the
> situation.
>
>
>
> Your characterization of "the fact of the matter" is morally confused. To
> wit, you want to imply that if some people at WMF knew something about what
> was happening in the Croatian Wikipedia, it follows that WMF
> institutionally decided, as a matter of policy, not to do what you wish
> they might have done. You do not have "the facts of the matter" that
> demonstrate such an institutional decision took place.
>
>
>
> Once again, you default to moral condemnation, and it seems self-evident
> that you're doing so because it's cheaper and easier than understanding
> what might actually have happened.
>
>
>
> Mike Godwin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient>
>
> Virus-free. www.avg.com
> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email_source=link_campaign=sig-email_content=emailclient>
>
>
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 257, Issue 1

[Mike Godwin]

Someone with the entirely authoritative email address "
hillbillyholi...@gmail.com" writes (apparently under the impression that I
don't know who Andreas is) the following:

'I am appalled by your sneering condescension of Andreas.'

This is an unusual misreading of a fairly straightforward, even though
ironic, text. A careful reader will have noted that did not dispute
Andreas's research or recitation of any facts. What I did dispute is his
characterization of motives, which is ungrounded in any of those facts.

In a subsequent message, Hillbillyholiday says somethingsomethingsomething
about me being a nazi, haha.

In the land where I grew up, soi-disant "hillbillies"--whether on holiday
or not--knew their Bible verses. So perhaps Hillbilly will understand why
the verse that comes to mind in reference to his attempt at a riposte is
Job 38:4.

Mike





On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 3:35 AM 
wrote:

> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit
>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikimedia-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..."
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021 (Kiril Simeonovski)
>2. Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...
>   (hillbillyholi...@gmail.com)
>3. Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...
>   (Gerard Meijssen)
>4. Re: Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
>   (Ashwin Baindur - User AshLin)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 22:21:50 +0200
> From: Kiril Simeonovski 
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Message-ID:
>  uefwammj5fu1mf9lefe_e2b8qeg...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="622d7805ca7c1e12"
>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to announce the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021
> , which
> is scheduled to take place from 5-7 November and will be a virtual event
> for a second consecutive year.
>
> This year's conference will be labelled with the slogan "Meet for a Better
> Future!" and its programme will be mostly filled with session proposals
> received through a call for submissions, while there will also be a handful
> of sessions that will feature keynote speakers or will be formatted as
> plenary discussions on important topics from the Wikimedia movement. *You
> can submit your session proposal
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2021/Submissions
> >
> until
> the extended deadline of 30 September 2021.*
>
> Considering that the event will take place in an online environment and
> there are no significant barriers for participation, we would like to
> encourage participation and session proposals by people from outside the
> region of Central and Eastern Europe.
>
> In case you have any questions regarding the conference, please do not
> hesitate to contact the Organising Committee members
> <
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Online_Meeting_2021/Development#Organising_Committee
> >.
> You can also read the official blog post
> <
> https://diff.wikimedia.org/2021/07/20/announcing-the-wikimedia-cee-online-meeting-2021/
> >
> announcing the event in order to get more information about it.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Kiril Simeonovski
> -- next part --
> A message part incompatible with plain text digests has been removed ...
> Name: not available
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> Size: 2787 bytes
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>
> --
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2021 23:55:40 -
> From: hillbillyholi...@gmail.com
> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion
> article to check...
> To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID:
> <162993574052.25702.10662504817674886...@lists1001.wikimedia.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Mike,
>
> I am appalled by your sneering condescension of Andreas.
>
> This is a researcher and journalist who has worked diligently for a decade
> to identify, examine and expose the systematic failings which beset
> Wikipedia. He generously offers practical soultions to problems the WMF is
> unaware of.  It is unquestionable that he has knows more about and has done
> more to improve the encyclopedia than you.
>
> As a spokesperson for a charity that exists to promote knowledge, your
> sarcastic and dismissive attitude is utterly shameful.
>
> If you think only a few "insignificant" sites like Croatian or Japanese
> Wikipedia have areas run by ultranationalists, think again -- English
> 

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

Andreas writes

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 11:12 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> But unless I am totally misreading you, your attitude sounds a lot like
> "Why should anyone care (or have cared) about Croatian and all these other
> languages spoken in some countries at the other end of the world?" If that
> does reflect your sentiment, then your mindset seems very much out of tune
> with WMF thought today.
>

The most generous assessment of this gloss is that you are, in fact,
totally misreading me. The less generous assessments I leave to the
rhetorically inclined reader.

>
> I am not sure you are actually interested in an answer here, but what I
> did do, for what it's worth, was to make sure that the WP Signpost and WP
> Kurier covered the story when it first broke, mention it repeatedly over
> the years in my writing on WO and in the Signpost, as well as in
> correspondence with journalists and academics, and submit the
> aforementioned idea to the WMF – to have experts review human rights
> topics' coverage in Wikipedia language versions that may be subject to
> undue political influence, and publicly report the results. I think that's
> about all you could have reasonably expected me to have done here.
>

I also think it is reasonable to expect you not to default to presuming
things about the motives of WMF personnel in the absence of evidence. But
that's me--I'm evidence-focused.

The fact of the matter is that for about a decade, one of Wikipedia's
> top-50 language versions promoted extremist content, with the WMF's full
> knowledge. That is Not A Good Thing, whether you work for the WMF or not,
> and you have given no discernible reason why what was done this year could
> not have been done years ago, when the WMF was first made aware of the
> situation.
>

Your characterization of "the fact of the matter" is morally confused. To
wit, you want to imply that if some people at WMF knew something about what
was happening in the Croatian Wikipedia, it follows that WMF
institutionally decided, as a matter of policy, not to do what you wish
they might have done. You do not have "the facts of the matter" that
demonstrate such an institutional decision took place.

Once again, you default to moral condemnation, and it seems self-evident
that you're doing so because it's cheaper and easier than understanding
what might actually have happened.

Mike Godwin
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 11:09 AM Chris Keating 
wrote:

> And when you were working for the Wikimedia Foundation those years, or
>> serving on the WMF board, how did your own exercise of moral courage
>> persuade people to adopt your point of view?  I'm certain, given your
>> convictions, that you didn't just stand idly by on the sidelines, hurling
>> the occasional moral critique on mailing lists!
>>
>
>
> I may have missed something somewhere, but I don't think Andreas Kolbe has
> ever served on the WMF Board of Trustees?
>

I don't think he has either.

In general, the preference for moral condemnation in second-guessing WMF's
decisions is directly proportional to the distance of the morally righteous
critic from actual hands-on policymaking or decisionmaking by WMF board and
staff. This is just something I've observed over time. But with Andreas I
inferred from the depth of his knowledge of the Croatia "fake news" problem
(before it was called "fake news") that he must have been deeply involved
in WMF's decisionmaking to be so authoritatively judgmental about it.


Mike
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 8:22 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Mike,
>
> The corruption of the Croatian Wikipedia began in 2009 and became front
> page news in Croatia in September 2013. The term "fake news" hadn't been
> invented yet, but the Croatian Education Minister issued a public warning
> to the country's youth in 2013 that they should avoid the Croatian
> Wikipedia, as much of its content was "not only misleading but also clearly
> falsified".
>
> So I can't agree that this "was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as less of
> a problem" at the time. It's hard to imagine how it could have been more
> prominent.
>

Your initial paragraph contradicts your conclusion. ("The term 'fake news'
hadn't been invented yet") While it is generally true that what happens
in Croatian Wikipedia normally affects the whole world instantaneously
(constrained only by the speed of light!), this may have been one of the
rare instances in which Croatian Wikipedia problems didn't ignite a
universal outcry in all places, everywhere, about disinformation.


> So it was all the more welcome that the WMF finally did something this
> year and commissioned an expert to write a report, after a decade of
> complaints from media and the volunteer community.
>

I love your interpolation of the word "finally" -- never let an opportunity
for moral criticism go unexploited!


> The costs of doing this now will hardly have been prohibitive.
> Commissioning a report like this would have been well within the WMF's
> means in 2013 as well. (The WMF reported a budget surplus of $13 million in
> 2013.) So I stand by my assertion: the WMF could have done then what it has
> done now, but lacked the will, or courage.
>

And when you were working for the Wikimedia Foundation those years, or
serving on the WMF board, how did your own exercise of moral courage
persuade people to adopt your point of view?  I'm certain, given your
convictions, that you didn't just stand idly by on the sidelines, hurling
the occasional moral critique on mailing lists!


Mike
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

This question reflects a common misunderstanding of the legal framework
that protects the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation has broad
rights to intervene in Wikipedia content (or other project content) above
and beyond what may be strictly required by law.  Exercise of these rights
does not create "the risk of being recognized as a publisher and having to
assume the responsibilities that come with it."

There is no substitute for reading the scholarship relating to Section 230
and other protections that apply to Wikipedia, to other Wikimedia projects,
and to the WMF generally. Those who forgo doing the reading--a good place
to start is Professor Jeff Kosseff's book, THE TWENTY-SIX WORDS THAT
CREATED THE INTERNET--will almost invariably get caught up by the
infectious but false meme that that any intervention in content beyond that
which is legally required creates "publisher" status and loses (e.g.)
Section 230 protection.

I've written on this and related subjects in many places:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939888751/?tag=slatmaga-20
https://slate.com/technology/2020/05/trump-twitter-section-230.html
https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/clarence-thomas-section-230-cda-content-moderation.html
https://slate.com/technology/2020/07/antitrust-big-tech-hearing-apple-amazon-google-facebook.html
https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/three-decades-internet-freedom-activism.html

This is only a sample of my writings on this and related subjects, but
don't let the volume of my prose deter you--my writing style makes up for
my prolixity.


Mike








On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 6:38 AM Lionel  wrote:

> Hi, Isn't the legal status of the foundation a web host? If it intervenes
> on projects within the framework of what the law expects from hosting
> companies, everything is fine. If it does more at the level of project
> governance and publishing, then it runs the risk of being recognized one
> day as a publisher and having to assume the responsibilities that come with
> it. Kind regards,
>
> Lionel Scheepmans
>
> Le 23-08-2021 0:32, Mike Godwin a écrit :
>
> I think you're indulging in the common tendency of inferring that if WMF
> did not do something a decade ago that it had the legal right to do, it
> follows that it lacked the moral courage to do that thing (or else that it
> had moral courage then but lacks it now--the moral-judgment fantasy can run
> in both directions).
>
> Given that concern about disinformation on Wikipedia and elsewhere was
> less prominent in public discourse a decade ago, Occam's Razor suggests
> that the primary reason for any change in willingness to engage in top-down
> intervention was that disinformation was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as
> less of problem. In addition, you assert (without any facts offered in
> support) that WMF was just as well-positioned to directly intervene in
> disinformation problems a decade ago as they may be now, or as they may
> soon be. This doesn't seem to be grounded in anything other than
> prejudgment.
>
> But if moral condemnation based on presumption of a lack of ... some
> virtue or other ... floats your boat, who am I to detract from your
> innocent fun?
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 12:59 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> Well, that was the difference I was referring to. (I wasn't really
> thinking of content found libellous in court, child pornography etc.)
>
> What is new is that the WMF is expressing an interest in the actual
> integrity of the *encyclopedic* content, hiring staff to address
> "misleading content", "disinformation", etc., rather than restricting
> itself to deletions required by law.
>
> The WMF's recent action concerning the Croatian Wikipedia surely is an
> example of this shift. The WMF had the means – but not the will – to do
> what it has done now, ten years ago.
>
> In a similar way, I understand that content added by ISIS sympathisers is
> a problem in the Arabic and Farsi Wikipedia versions that the WMF is now
> trying to address.
>
> Andreas
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 1:31 PM Mike Godwin  wrote:
>
>
> Andreas Kolbe writes:
>
>
> It's worth noting that Yumiko's article (now also on fastcompany.com)
> quotes the WMF as saying it "does *not often* get involved in issues
> related to the creation and maintenance of content on the site."
>
> That "not often" actually indicates a little publicised but significant
> departure from past practice when the WMF would disclaim all responsibility
> for content 
>
>
> WMF did not "disclaim all responsibility for content." Instead, WMF
> disclaimed primary responsibility for content, and still does. When WMF was
> understaffed, as it typically was during Wikipedia's

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

I think you're indulging in the common tendency of inferring that if WMF
did not do something a decade ago that it had the legal right to do, it
follows that it lacked the moral courage to do that thing (or else that it
had moral courage then but lacks it now--the moral-judgment fantasy can run
in both directions).

Given that concern about disinformation on Wikipedia and elsewhere was less
prominent in public discourse a decade ago, Occam's Razor suggests that the
primary reason for any change in willingness to engage in top-down
intervention was that disinformation was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as
less of problem. In addition, you assert (without any facts offered in
support) that WMF was just as well-positioned to directly intervene in
disinformation problems a decade ago as they may be now, or as they may
soon be. This doesn't seem to be grounded in anything other than
prejudgment.

But if moral condemnation based on presumption of a lack of ... some virtue
or other ... floats your boat, who am I to detract from your innocent fun?

Mike



On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 12:59 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Well, that was the difference I was referring to. (I wasn't really
> thinking of content found libellous in court, child pornography etc.)
>
> What is new is that the WMF is expressing an interest in the actual
> integrity of the *encyclopedic* content, hiring staff to address
> "misleading content", "disinformation", etc., rather than restricting
> itself to deletions required by law.
>
> The WMF's recent action concerning the Croatian Wikipedia surely is an
> example of this shift. The WMF had the means – but not the will – to do
> what it has done now, ten years ago.
>
> In a similar way, I understand that content added by ISIS sympathisers is
> a problem in the Arabic and Farsi Wikipedia versions that the WMF is now
> trying to address.
>
> Andreas
>
> On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 1:31 PM Mike Godwin  wrote:
>
>>
>> Andreas Kolbe writes:
>>
>>
>>> It's worth noting that Yumiko's article (now also on fastcompany.com)
>>> quotes the WMF as saying it "does *not often* get involved in issues
>>> related to the creation and maintenance of content on the site."
>>>
>>> That "not often" actually indicates a little publicised but significant
>>> departure from past practice when the WMF would disclaim all
>>> responsibility
>>> for content 
>>>
>>
>> WMF did not "disclaim all responsibility for content." Instead, WMF
>> disclaimed primary responsibility for content, and still does. When WMF was
>> understaffed, as it typically was during Wikipedia's first decade, we made
>> a point of steering certain complaints and legal demands to the editor
>> community as a default choice. The policy reasons for this choice were
>> straightforward. But WMF directly intervened on a number of occasions,
>> typically as required by law.
>>
>> Mike Godwin
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikipedia issues in UNDARK.org #Opinion article to check...

[Mike Godwin]

Andreas Kolbe writes:


> It's worth noting that Yumiko's article (now also on fastcompany.com)
> quotes the WMF as saying it "does *not often* get involved in issues
> related to the creation and maintenance of content on the site."
>
> That "not often" actually indicates a little publicised but significant
> departure from past practice when the WMF would disclaim all responsibility
> for content 
>

WMF did not "disclaim all responsibility for content." Instead, WMF
disclaimed primary responsibility for content, and still does. When WMF was
understaffed, as it typically was during Wikipedia's first decade, we made
a point of steering certain complaints and legal demands to the editor
community as a default choice. The policy reasons for this choice were
straightforward. But WMF directly intervened on a number of occasions,
typically as required by law.

Mike Godwin
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Block of Wikipedia in Turkey ruled as unconstitutional

[Mike Godwin]

I'd have been surprised if they had been unblocked, but, as I said, the
constitutional win is still important.

Mike

On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 11:32 AM John Erling Blad  wrote:

> Both en.wikipedia.org and tr.wikipedia.org are still blocked.
>
> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 10:44 PM Mike Godwin  wrote:
> >
> > Great news! Even if the court's decision isn't implemented by the current
> > Turkish government, it is important to have established that the block
> was
> > a violation of constitutional principles.
> >
> > Mike
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 4:40 PM Katherine Maher 
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I have some good news to share with you all -- after nearly three
> years of
> > > Wikipedia being blocked in Turkey, the Turkish Constitutional Court has
> > > ruled that this is unconstitutional. We hope that access will be
> restored
> > > soon in light of this ruling, and will keep you updated as we hear
> further
> > > developments.
> > >
> > > Please join me in congratulating the Wikimedia community in Turkey, the
> > > millions of Wikipedia readers in Turkey, and all of those struggling
> under
> > > censorship around the world, on this critical affirmation of the
> > > fundamental right to knowledge.
> > >
> > > Imposed in April of 2017, the block has prevented the 80+ million
> people
> > > in Turkey from accessing and participating in all language versions of
> > > Wikipedia. It also prevented members of our community in Turkey from
> freely
> > > engaging with the projects and impaired our movement’s global effort to
> > > represent the sum of all knowledge.
> > >
> > > As many of you might recall, we had filed an urgent application to the
> > > European Court of Human Rights in April 2019. Our petition on the
> legality
> > > of the access ban is currently before the ECHR and we are evaluating
> our
> > > next steps based on this latest ruling.
> > >
> > > A team from within and outside the Wikimedia Foundation has been
> working
> > > diligently since the block was instituted to restore full access in
> Turkey.
> > > Throughout this process, we have been guided by our Wikimedia values
> and a
> > > belief that Wikipedia must be accessible in its entirety; with no
> > > censorship of any kind to be tolerated. We worked closely with
> Wikimedia
> > > community members in Turkey to understand and act in a way that
> reflected
> > > their needs, wishes, and local context. We also benefited greatly from
> > > conversations with experts around the world.
> > >
> > > We will be posting more information on the Foundation website soon. In
> the
> > > meantime, I wanted to offer my sincere appreciation and admiration to
> the
> > > members of our community in Turkey -- you have shown great integrity,
> > > courage, and dedication. Your unwavering commitment to the Wikimedia
> > > projects, despite the obstacles placed in front of you, is an
> inspiration
> > > to us all.
> > >
> > > Thank you to every Wikimedia community member around the world who
> showed
> > > support for the Turkish community. Your commitment to our sense of
> > > community and the strength of our global movement is an inspiration.
> > >
> > > Finally, I would also like to thank the many Foundation staff and
> others
> > > involved over the past months for your exceptional diligence,
> > > professionalism, and tact in handling a delicate situation.
> > >
> > > While this is a favorable ruling for our case in Turkey, it remains to
> be
> > > seen whether the Turkish government will indeed restore access in
> Turkey.
> > > And serious threats to free knowledge remain around the world. Today's
> > > ruling is a reminder of the work we still left to do.
> > >
> > > But at this moment, let us celebrate this important recognition that
> the
> > > right to information is fundamental to every human, with happy
> anticipation
> > > of the return of Turkey to our global community of editors, readers,
> and
> > > knowledge seekers.
> > >
> > > Katherine
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > Katherine Maher (she/her)
> > >
> > > Executive Director
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
> > >
> > > ___
> > > Pleas

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Block of Wikipedia in Turkey ruled as unconstitutional

[Mike Godwin]

Great news! Even if the court's decision isn't implemented by the current
Turkish government, it is important to have established that the block was
a violation of constitutional principles.

Mike

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 4:40 PM Katherine Maher 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have some good news to share with you all -- after nearly three years of
> Wikipedia being blocked in Turkey, the Turkish Constitutional Court has
> ruled that this is unconstitutional. We hope that access will be restored
> soon in light of this ruling, and will keep you updated as we hear further
> developments.
>
> Please join me in congratulating the Wikimedia community in Turkey, the
> millions of Wikipedia readers in Turkey, and all of those struggling under
> censorship around the world, on this critical affirmation of the
> fundamental right to knowledge.
>
> Imposed in April of 2017, the block has prevented the 80+ million people
> in Turkey from accessing and participating in all language versions of
> Wikipedia. It also prevented members of our community in Turkey from freely
> engaging with the projects and impaired our movement’s global effort to
> represent the sum of all knowledge.
>
> As many of you might recall, we had filed an urgent application to the
> European Court of Human Rights in April 2019. Our petition on the legality
> of the access ban is currently before the ECHR and we are evaluating our
> next steps based on this latest ruling.
>
> A team from within and outside the Wikimedia Foundation has been working
> diligently since the block was instituted to restore full access in Turkey.
> Throughout this process, we have been guided by our Wikimedia values and a
> belief that Wikipedia must be accessible in its entirety; with no
> censorship of any kind to be tolerated. We worked closely with Wikimedia
> community members in Turkey to understand and act in a way that reflected
> their needs, wishes, and local context. We also benefited greatly from
> conversations with experts around the world.
>
> We will be posting more information on the Foundation website soon. In the
> meantime, I wanted to offer my sincere appreciation and admiration to the
> members of our community in Turkey -- you have shown great integrity,
> courage, and dedication. Your unwavering commitment to the Wikimedia
> projects, despite the obstacles placed in front of you, is an inspiration
> to us all.
>
> Thank you to every Wikimedia community member around the world who showed
> support for the Turkish community. Your commitment to our sense of
> community and the strength of our global movement is an inspiration.
>
> Finally, I would also like to thank the many Foundation staff and others
> involved over the past months for your exceptional diligence,
> professionalism, and tact in handling a delicate situation.
>
> While this is a favorable ruling for our case in Turkey, it remains to be
> seen whether the Turkish government will indeed restore access in Turkey.
> And serious threats to free knowledge remain around the world. Today's
> ruling is a reminder of the work we still left to do.
>
> But at this moment, let us celebrate this important recognition that the
> right to information is fundamental to every human, with happy anticipation
> of the return of Turkey to our global community of editors, readers, and
> knowledge seekers.
>
> Katherine
>
> --
>
> Katherine Maher (she/her)
>
> Executive Director
>
> Wikimedia Foundation 
>
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[Wikimedia-l] My nomination for the Internet Society Board of Trustees

[Mike Godwin]

Hi, folks.

I'm just writing to let you know that I've been nominated for election
to the Internet Society Board of Trustees.

I stressed in my submissions to the nominating committee that I
believe responding to growing demands for more content regulation by
infrastructure providers, as well as the need to preserve free and
open-source information and other resources, should be central
priorities for the Internet Society going forward. I hope most (or
all!) of you agree!

The nominees are listed below:
https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/elections/2019/nominees/?fbclid=IwAR1qozU-R5KlhH7By4pSijOqB24wVJtPVqjSQKjuzno3vLPALzPSJUrtGHA

Best regards!

Mike Godwin

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing the Foundation's challenge to recent U.S. immigration executive order

[Mike Godwin]

Yair Rand writes:

> I find it difficult to believe that this situation is so critical
> and urgent that an RfC in advance was impossible, so if it does fall under
> that section, the policy was yet again violated.

I don't find it difficult at all to believe time was of the essence,
but, then, I'm an attorney who's worked for many years on
collaborative efforts, including but not limited to legal action.

I grant, of course, that your experience with doing legal and
public-policy assessments may be different. But if your view is that
either the Board of Trustees or WMF staff cannot be trusted to make
these assessments, then I urge you to explain in more depth why you
think this is so.

My own experience has been that quite often the Board or the WMF staff
have to make quick decisions, especially when the timeline for
decision-making is not in WMF's control. Certainly I often was called
upon to make decisions on behalf of WMF and the Wikimedia movement on
timelines that made consultation with Wikimedia-l or with committees
and affiliated organizations unworkable. I hope you don't find that
difficult to believe.

Please assume good faith.


Best,


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics

[Mike Godwin]

I don't respond to Wikimedia-l discussion very often, but I think this
debate comes up often enough that it's worth it for me to explain and
elaborate on my own positions.

(1) I understand WP:NPOV to be a rule/guideline about content,
particularly Wikipedia content. I do not believe it is a rule about
Wikimedia processes, or about the Wikimedia movement's mission.

(2) As I put it many times many years ago in the years before and
after the SOPA/PIPA blackout, there are few POVs *less* neutral than
the commitment to give all the information in the world to everyone
for free. We are not a neutral enterprise, and we never have been.

(3) There is a vision that some members of the community have that WMF
employees (or contractors, or Trustees, or representatives) ought
never speak out and offer an opinion about political issues.
Ironically, some people in our movement would not want a WMF to have a
public opinion about, say, what "extreme vetting" means unless that
opinion itself were "extremely vetted."

(4) I think those who hold the view I summarize as (3) above are
making a mistake. It seems to me that the reason the community and the
Trustees have slowly crafted an evolving process that, when it works
well, results in strong, capable individuals who can speak effectively
both as representatives of our movement and as leaders of it, is that
we all know we can't hold a plebiscite for everything.

(5) We now know more than eve, thanks to events this year and last
year, that the larger, global, shared world of democratic values is
fragile, and that it's better to respond rapidly to rapidly emerging
issues (such as the treatment of Wikimedians of all backgrounds who
want or need to cross borders to participate in our shared, great
work) than it is to wait until our response is untimely, irrelevant,
or even impossible. The mode that seems to work most effectively for
us is to have strong, effective leaders and employees and
representatives who have earned our trust, and who for that reason can
be trusted to respond on our behalf as rapidly and effectively as
necessary to rapidly emerging issues. Without, shall we say, "extreme
vetting."

(6) Sometimes those whom the Trustees and/or the community have chosen
are not up to the job we ask of them, and it is our strength that we
reserve the right to make our unhappiness known, through channels
ranging from this mailing list to Trustee elections to "voting with
our feet." Because our mission, the Wikimedia mission, is
fundamentally a human process it will be imperfect, and its
imperfections will make us unhappy sometimes. But we are adults, and
we live with those imperfections and take some joy at times in
recognizing them and trying to do better.

(7) Given all these considerations, I am proud to be part of the
Wikimedia movement, proud to be a part of the same community as all of
you, even when the community is sometimes contentious.  I hope that in
the long run we agree now -- right now -- is a time when we should
stand behind anyone in our community, from the Trustees and Katherine
on down to every last one of us, who stands up and speaks out for
humane values and humane judgments, because, it seems to me, the
Wikimedia movement is meant to be a humane, outward-looking,
courageous movement that acknowledges self-doubt but also remains
committed to enabling us all to raise our individual and collective
voices in defense of values grounded in generosity, love, and
tolerance.

Thanks for listening.

--Mike Godwin
WMF General Counsel 2007-2010

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] My article on Wikipedia Zero and Net Neutrality, just out today at Reason.com

[Mike Godwin]

People who are interested in the history of my views on network
neutrality may find fodder here in this 2006 article I wrote on behalf
of the American Library Association.

http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/oitp/publications/issuebriefs/A%20Library%20Perspectiv.pdf

To the extent my views have evolved since them (and I'm inclined to
say they haven't changed much), this is due partly to my years of work
for Wikimedia Foundation and partly to my work on internet policy in
the developing world.

See, for example, how I dealt with the issue in developing the Great
Charter for Cambodian Internet Freedom.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-charter-cambodian-internet-freedom-mike-godwin.


--Mike

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 5:35 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote:


 On 9 April 2015 at 00:51, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:

 http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/08/nothing-but-net


 --Mike



 I'm not convinced you are helping your case with your choice of venue.


 --
 geni

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] My article on Wikipedia Zero and Net Neutrality, just out today at Reason.com

[Mike Godwin]

I'm not convinced you offered me a better choice of venue, geni. (If
you did, I missed the email.) But, then, I'm also not convinced that
worrying about venue -- rather than, say, focusing on publishing with
a journal that would give me the space to develop an argument at some
length.

I'm not well-positioned to game out the way every snarky commenter on
the sidelines will interpret anything I write or where I manage to get
published.  But it's worth noting that the same journal asked me to
make the case for Obama's re-election back in 2012, which is also
something you wouldn't expect.

We may reasonably expect, given the choice of venue, that my argument
will be considered quite heterodox to its regular readers, which is
actually good, not bad. (Other pieces by other authors have decried
net neutrality in general--I didn't do this, however, and they knew I
wouldn't.)


--Mike




On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 5:35 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote:


 On 9 April 2015 at 00:51, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:

 http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/08/nothing-but-net


 --Mike



 I'm not convinced you are helping your case with your choice of venue.


 --
 geni

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[Wikimedia-l] My article on Wikipedia Zero and Net Neutrality, just out today at Reason.com

[Mike Godwin]

http://reason.com/archives/2015/04/08/nothing-but-net


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 133, Issue 17

[Mike Godwin]

 paper:

 Lieberman, Michael D., and Jimmy Lin. You Are Where You Edit:
 Locating Wikipedia Contributors through Edit Histories. ICWSM. 2009.
 (PDF 
 http://www.pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/syllabi/infx598_wi12/papers/wikipedia/lieberman-lin.YouAreWhereYouEdit.ICWSM09.pdf
 )

 For those of you that don't want to read the whole paper, you can find
 a recap of the most relevant findings in this presentation by Maurizio
 Napolitano:
 
 http://www.slideshare.net/napo/social-geography-wikipedia-a-quick-overwiew
 

 The main idea is associating spatial coordinates to a Wikipedia
 articles when possible, this articles are called geopages. Then you
 extract from the history of articles the users which have edited a
 geopage. If you plot the geopages edited by a given contributor you
 can see that they tend to cluster, so you can define an edit area.
 The study finds that 30-35% of contributors concentrate their edits in
 an edit area smaller than 1 deg^2 (~12,362 km^2, approximately the
 area of Connecticut or Northern Ireland[1] (thanks, Wikipedia!)).

 For another free/libre project with a geographic focus like
 OpenStreetMap this is even more marked, check out for example this
 tool «“Your OSM Heat Map” (aka Where did you contribute?)»[2] by
 Pascal Neis.

 This, of course, is not a straightforward de-anonimization but this
 methods work in principle for every contributor even if you obfuscate
 their IP or username (provided that you can still assign all the edits
 from a given user to a unique and univocal identifier)

 C
 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_degree
 [2a] http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/
 [2b] http://neis-one.org/2011/08/yosmhm/

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 --

 Message: 6
 Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2015 10:41:59 +0100
 From: Lilburne lilbu...@tygers-of-wrath.net
 To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice
 President of Strategic Partnerships
 Message-ID: 55210367.6020...@tygers-of-wrath.net
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

 On 02/04/2015 02:54, Mike Godwin wrote:
 Andreas writes:

 Prominent organisations campaigning for a free and open web very
 strongly disagree with your view.

 I said there are no facts, and you responded by citing opinion pieces.
 That's cool, but opinions are not themselves facts.

 Furthermore, in some circles, I've been considered from time to time
 to be someone prominent whose entire career has been dedicated to a
 free and open web. If you're suggesting that everyone -- or even
 everyone prominent -- who believes in a free and open web very
 strongly disagrees with me, then you are misinformed.

 No we think that there are relationships between faux advocacy and what
 benefits large
 multinational tech corporations to the detriment of everyone else. That
 we do not see
 'citizen advocacy' groups speak out against the rape of privacy that
 online web operators
 engage in, that they speak mainly of governments who by and large
 out-source the
 surveillance to private companies.

 For example did the EFF speak out about Google using Apps for
 Education to profile kids?
 No totally silent on the vile behavour of its pay master:
 http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html
 https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/30/google-stops-data-mining-students-email/


 There is an
 honest difference of opinion about what the developing world needs
 first. And, in my experience, it is only individuals in developed,
 industrialized countries with very little direct knowledge about the
 infrastructural and access challenges in developing countries who
 imagine that zero-rated services are categorically a threat to a free
 and open web.

 That free and open is bullshit for the entrenchment of the status quo.
 That Government
 turned a blind eye to the abuses in the early days, effectively allowing
 monopolies to become
 established and that it about time that they reigned the bastards back.
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/01/modernise_safe_harbour_for_the_tech_oligarch_era_mike_weatherley/


 I've actually written about this issue at length, and will be
 publishing another article on the issue next week. I'll post the link
 here when I have it.

 Whether the U.S. government's Federal Communications is not itself a
 prominent organization that has committed itself to a free and open
 web is a proposition worth challenging is, of course, up to you. But
 I hope you don't expect such a challenge to be taken seriously. I know
 the FCC's new Report and Order on net neutrality is a very long
 (400-page) document, and there is of course no requirement that you
 actually

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Mike Godwin]

Rupert Thurner writes:

 while i love irony, and value your opinion a lot, i find the tone of this
 email a little harsh, not to call it unfair.

I'm strangely untroubled by harsh, but I'm glad you don't call it
unfair. I don't think I was unfair. Besides, when someone is as
insignificant as I am, especially in comparison to what the weighty
opinion-makers at what Andreas calls prominent organizations, one
has to speak with a little more bite.

 You are well known for
 free speech advocacy, and beeing libertarian.

I'm not a libertarian, as those who know me personally can attest.
Many things that are well-known are untrue, and this is one of them.
Yes, I'm a *civil libertarian*, and I work with libertarians quite
often (I work with folks of other political views as well), but the
only people who know me to be libertarian are people who don't know
me at all. My politics, to the extent that they can be easily
characterized by people who don't know me personally, might be best
described as reflexively pro-Labour (to someone in the UK) or
social democrat (to someone elsewhere in the EU) or yellow-dog
Democrat (to someone in the American South).

 Per definition of this you
 are one of the last persons on this globe I d seek advise for antitrust law
 and net neutrality.

Perhaps you should reason less per definition and reason more from
actual facts about what my beliefs actually are. You don't actually
seem to know what my politics are. So I imagine you couldn't know that
I happen to think the FCC's Report and Order is pretty good, in
general, and, speaking personally, I'm pleased to see these network
neutrality obligations imposed -- with an express refusal to make
categorical judgments about zero-rated services, including Wikipedia
Zero.

 i cannot judge what happens in asia where indonesia looks better
 positioned than philippines, and africa, where eg ghana has 5 competitors,
 nigeria four [1][2][3] which both look in a better position than others.

Data costs in the Philippines are remarkably high, and penetration to
rural areas (and islands) is low. Indonesia does a little better, not
least because the problem of reaching higher percentages of the
population (at lower cost) is particularly pronounced in Indonesia
(every place in Indonesia is really far from every other place).

As for Africa: it's a big continent (as is Asia, of course). Nigeria
and Ghana are not typical.

Once the folks who preach about net-neutrality-with-no-exceptions get
out to developing countries and do some actual development work with
local NGOs, their notions about network neutrality and development may
change. But I'm perpetually bemused by individuals in developed
countries who imagine that the world is better off if would-be
Wikipedians have to pay extra for the privilege of reading and editing
Wikipedia articles (which is apparently what opponents of Wikipedia
Zero want).


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Mike Godwin]

GerardM writes:

 With Wikipedia Zero people have access to knowledge that they would not
 have otherwise. It is well established that having information readily
 available is an important indicator for further development. Not having
 Wikipedia available is absolutely a worse situation than having it.

 [...]
 My answer is sure HOWEVER given that the objective of Wikipedia is to share
 in the sum of all knowledge, your argument is decidedly secondary. Sources
 may be important but they are secondary to having the information available
 in the first place. As long as we have sources in full blown Wikipedia, as
 long as it is WMF that provides the Wikipedia Zero content... what is your
 point. Yes, ideally we want people to ensure that people know about
 sources. When sources are just statements of fact and they are in turn not
 accessible because of cost. What is your point in practical terms?

 Wikipedia Zero is very much a fulfillment of our aspirations. Do not forget
 who you are: white, privileged and well educated. What you propose is
 taking away something that you take for granted. Not nice.

I agree with everything Gerard says here. My mission as a Wikimedian,
both during my tenure as an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation and
in my time as a volunteer Wikimedian, has been to get the world's
knowledge into everybody's hands for free. Wikipedia Zero is so
consistent with this primary goal that I value it even more highly
than network neutrality (which I also favor, as a general rule, in
countries with developed and humanely priced internet services).

It should be noted that the Federal Communications Commission, in its
recent Report and Order requiring network neutrality for American
telcos and service providers, expressly refused to draw a categorical
conclusion whether zero-rated services (including Wikipedia Zero)
harmed competition. Instead, the Commission said it would make
case-by-case determinations based on the particular services each
zero-rated service is providing. If it were shown that Wikipedia Zero
is suppressing competition from other encyclopedic knowledge bases or
suppressing sharing of knowledge, that would be something for the
Commission to consider -- but of course there are no facts that
support this argument, at least not yet.

I've spent the last two years working on internet-policy issues in
developing countries, from Myanmar to Cambodia to South Sudan, and my
personal experience has been that Wikipedia Zero is a profoundly
important developmental resource in developing countries, where the
key barrier to Wikipedia access (as a user or contributor) is the data
caps on the mobile devices that the vast majority of users need to get
access to the internet. Wikipedia Zero gets us past that barrier in
these countries. Yes, in an ideal world, perhaps, there might be an
argument against privileging Wikipedia Zero in this way -- but in an
ideal world everybody would have free access to Wikipedia already.

To get to an ideal world, we'll need everyone to have access to
Wikipedia (and to Wikimedia resources generally) -- not just those of
us in developed countries, but to everyone everywhere. Wikipedia Zero
is a strategic approach to expanding access for everybody in every
country. As we do this, we'll be creating incentives for developing
countries' telcos and internet providers to expand their access and
facilities in ways that will enable more and more citizens to fully
participate as users and contributors to Wikipedia. Any other approach
reminds me of the beginning chess player who looks at a board prior to
the first move and says how do I get to checkmate from here? The
experienced chess player knows you have to make a number of strategic
decisions and deployments in advance in order to make eventual victory
possible.  Wikipedia Zero is one strategy that gets us to the end
result we all want to see.

Best regards,


--Mike Godwin
WMF General Counsel 1007-2010
Director of Innovation Policy and General Counsel, The R Street Institute

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Mike Godwin]

If only my emails were wiki-editable.  Thanks for the correction
regarding my affiliation.

Seems to me that in its current form it's just going to drag
along---Zero either needs a clear procedural rethink or it needs to be
would down.

The only two possible choices, eh?


--Mike




On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Aleksey Bilogur
aleksey.bilo...@gmail.com wrote:
 Er, Mike, this is a minor point but your signature seems to indicate that
 you were general counsel for over a millennium---very impressive!

 Personally I think that Zero should be evaluated from an impact perspective.
 While it's indisputable that it's strategically aligned with the WMF
 mission, if the message isn't reaching the audience is strategic alignment a
 good enough argument to keep chugging? The Foundation has taken a lot of
 flak for taking stances like that---totally strategically aligned, sure, but
 nil for impact. Seems to me that in its current form it's just going to drag
 along---Zero either needs a clear procedural rethink or it needs to be would
 down.

 On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:

 GerardM writes:

  With Wikipedia Zero people have access to knowledge that they would not
  have otherwise. It is well established that having information readily
  available is an important indicator for further development. Not having
  Wikipedia available is absolutely a worse situation than having it.
 
  [...]
  My answer is sure HOWEVER given that the objective of Wikipedia is to
  share
  in the sum of all knowledge, your argument is decidedly secondary.
  Sources
  may be important but they are secondary to having the information
  available
  in the first place. As long as we have sources in full blown Wikipedia,
  as
  long as it is WMF that provides the Wikipedia Zero content... what is
  your
  point. Yes, ideally we want people to ensure that people know about
  sources. When sources are just statements of fact and they are in turn
  not
  accessible because of cost. What is your point in practical terms?
 
  Wikipedia Zero is very much a fulfillment of our aspirations. Do not
  forget
  who you are: white, privileged and well educated. What you propose is
  taking away something that you take for granted. Not nice.

 I agree with everything Gerard says here. My mission as a Wikimedian,
 both during my tenure as an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation and
 in my time as a volunteer Wikimedian, has been to get the world's
 knowledge into everybody's hands for free. Wikipedia Zero is so
 consistent with this primary goal that I value it even more highly
 than network neutrality (which I also favor, as a general rule, in
 countries with developed and humanely priced internet services).

 It should be noted that the Federal Communications Commission, in its
 recent Report and Order requiring network neutrality for American
 telcos and service providers, expressly refused to draw a categorical
 conclusion whether zero-rated services (including Wikipedia Zero)
 harmed competition. Instead, the Commission said it would make
 case-by-case determinations based on the particular services each
 zero-rated service is providing. If it were shown that Wikipedia Zero
 is suppressing competition from other encyclopedic knowledge bases or
 suppressing sharing of knowledge, that would be something for the
 Commission to consider -- but of course there are no facts that
 support this argument, at least not yet.

 I've spent the last two years working on internet-policy issues in
 developing countries, from Myanmar to Cambodia to South Sudan, and my
 personal experience has been that Wikipedia Zero is a profoundly
 important developmental resource in developing countries, where the
 key barrier to Wikipedia access (as a user or contributor) is the data
 caps on the mobile devices that the vast majority of users need to get
 access to the internet. Wikipedia Zero gets us past that barrier in
 these countries. Yes, in an ideal world, perhaps, there might be an
 argument against privileging Wikipedia Zero in this way -- but in an
 ideal world everybody would have free access to Wikipedia already.

 To get to an ideal world, we'll need everyone to have access to
 Wikipedia (and to Wikimedia resources generally) -- not just those of
 us in developed countries, but to everyone everywhere. Wikipedia Zero
 is a strategic approach to expanding access for everybody in every
 country. As we do this, we'll be creating incentives for developing
 countries' telcos and internet providers to expand their access and
 facilities in ways that will enable more and more citizens to fully
 participate as users and contributors to Wikipedia. Any other approach
 reminds me of the beginning chess player who looks at a board prior to
 the first move and says how do I get to checkmate from here? The
 experienced chess player knows you have to make a number of strategic
 decisions and deployments in advance in order to make eventual

[Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Mike Godwin]

Andreas writes:

Prominent organisations campaigning for a free and open web very
strongly disagree with your view.

I said there are no facts, and you responded by citing opinion pieces.
That's cool, but opinions are not themselves facts.

Furthermore, in some circles, I've been considered from time to time
to be someone prominent whose entire career has been dedicated to a
free and open web. If you're suggesting that everyone -- or even
everyone prominent -- who believes in a free and open web very
strongly disagrees with me, then you are misinformed. There is an
honest difference of opinion about what the developing world needs
first. And, in my experience, it is only individuals in developed,
industrialized countries with very little direct knowledge about the
infrastructural and access challenges in developing countries who
imagine that zero-rated services are categorically a threat to a free
and open web.

I've actually written about this issue at length, and will be
publishing another article on the issue next week. I'll post the link
here when I have it.

Whether the U.S. government's Federal Communications is not itself a
prominent organization that has committed itself to a free and open
web is a proposition worth challenging is, of course, up to you. But
I hope you don't expect such a challenge to be taken seriously. I know
the FCC's new Report and Order on net neutrality is a very long
(400-page) document, and there is of course no requirement that you
actually have read it (much less some appreciable fraction of the
comments that led to it). But I've done so. The FCC expressly refused
to adopt the categorical, simplistic, binary approach you have posted
here.

My friends and colleagues at EFF, Access Now, and elsewhere -- as well
as individual scholars and commentators like Marvin Ammori -- know me,
and they know why I differ with them about this stuff. What I have
explained to them is that my experiences of working with in-country
NGOs in the developing world (who don't, in fact, disagree with me
about this) have shaped my opinion. If your own experience in working
on access issues in (say) Africa or Southeast Asia is stronger than my
own, I'd be more likely to be persuaded by your, uh, original
research than by your effort to selectively adduce footnotes in
support of your assertions. At least that's my inclination after a
quarter of a century of working for internet freedom. (I was the first
employee at EFF, where I worked for nine years.)

The Access Now editorial, in particular, was drafted by someone who
had not been open to discussing why it doesn't make sense to describe
Wikipedia Zero as having forged deals with telcos. How do I happen
to know this? Because, as a result of conversations with Marvin
Ammori, I tried reaching out to Access Now. (The author is not among
the many Access Now lawyers I know personally.)  Those efforts never
went anywhere--the writer wasn't interested in discussing it. What you
may not know, if you are not based in Washington, DC, policy circles,
is that very many (although not all) network-neutrality activists are
afraid that if there is *any* exception to a categorical prohibition
on zero-rated services, this will somehow undermine network neutrality
forever. I do not share their predisposition (or yours) to understand
the issue in such simplistic, binary terms.

Please forgive me for not re-reading the Access Now editorial again,
even though you quote it so heavily here. I've discussed the editorial
face-to-face, however, with my Access Now friends in DC, and again at
the Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul last year, and just last
week at RightsCon in Manila, where I was a guest speaker and moderator
of a panel on internet-rights initiatives in Southeast Asia.

I didn't happen to see you at any of those events, but they were quite
busy and crowded, so perhaps I missed you. Perhaps your own labors on
behalf of a free and open internet were so demanding that they
prevented you from attending. If so, I understand entirely.

I'll be back in Phnom Penh working on the Great Charter for Cambodian
Internet Freedom for a couple of weeks in June--if you can find your
way there, I'd be happy to introduce you to activists who, like me,
believe that Wikipedia Zero is the kind of project that helps citizens
more immediately and pervasively than a commitment to charging for
mobile internet access by the byte.

Fortunately, my heterodoxy on the issue of net neutrality has not
prevented the prominent organizations you mention from continuing to
work with me on issues like NSA reform, copyright and patent reform,
and updating the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  That
stuff is going to be my major work obligation in April and May. I
guess I'm lucky that the prominence of those organizations has not led
them to being so casually dismissive of me as you have chosen to be.


Best regards,


--Mike Godwin




On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

[Mike Godwin]

Jens writes:

 (I'm still a little bit irritated by your rhetoric trickery,
 Mike, when calling the usual and established understanding of net
 neutrality repeatedly absolutist. This cheap rhetorical maneuver doesn't
 fit you.)

I suppose at this point I could declare that its rhetorical
trickery, Jens, for you to declare my honest expression of my opinion
regarding network neutrality to be rhetorical trickery. (It's
actually a reflection of discussions I had with my colleagues at the
Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul earlier this year.)

I frankly don't see why you need to understand my beliefs regarding
network neutrality as cheap rhetorical maneuver when in fact there
has always been variation among net-neutrality activists as to what
network neutrality might mean. I've been writing about the subject
for eight years now, and my writing on the issue is publicly
available. In general, a cheap maneuver is one that takes little
investment, and I've clearly invested more than most people. As for
trickery, it hardly seems to me to be a trick when I'm not
concealing anything.

I want to suggest that if your first impulse is to criticize my
motives rather than to Assume Good Faith, you may want to consider
that I get nothing personally out of (a) advocating Wikipedia Zero, an
initiative that post-dates my tenure as WMF staff, or (b) talking
about network neutrality in a way that recognizes the particular
issues that mobile platform providers invoke.

As I pointed have pointed out, we *already* qualify network neutrality
with exceptions. These exceptions have not been ones you've noticed
before now, as far as i know. Should Wikipedia Zero be an exception? I
think so, for the reasons I've stated, as well as for the general
proposition that people in developing nations need unfettered access
to Wikipedia content now, and should not have to wait until the
Promised Land of generally unmetered access to mobile platforms is
created (which may not occur in our lifetimes).

It would be good for WMF to admit that with the best intentions a
 mistake was made which scale wasn't really thought through before.

It would be better if one didn't begin with the assumption that no one
at WMF thought hard about these issues before Wikipedia Zero was
launched. And still better, in terms of effective persuasion, if you
didn't begin by assuming bad faith (e.g., rhetorical trickery on the
part of those who disagree with you. After all, I don't assume bad
faith on your part.
.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

[Mike Godwin]

If MZ doesn't like the Public Broadcasting System, I see no reason for
him to misplace his rage against public television and direct it to
Wikipedia. Certainly PBS forces me to see sponsorship statements that
Wikipedia doesn't force me to see.

I don't actually see the Wikipedia banner ads, so I can't understand
how MZ has conflated his experience with Wikipedia -- where I guess he
does not log in -- with his experience of PBS, whose sponsorship
announcements can't be avoided even if you are a donor.

I do follow the debate about PBS from time to time, but MZ's comments
haven't shown up there for me yet, if he has posted them.


--Mike



On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 8:10 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:
 Mike Godwin wrote:
Does this mean some platform providers will use Wikipedia Zero to
justify their own self-serving economic alliances? Of course it does.
But we don't have to let their propagandists define us.

 I think we should be explicit here: in exchange for zero-rated access to
 Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation places a banner at the top of the
 page, inserting a prominent advertisement for the associated
 telecommunications company. So much for we'll never run advertising, eh.

 I'm still digesting this thread (and I certainly agree with Liam that this
 thread is a showcase for healthy and informed discussion), but I do
 wonder: if Wikipedia Zero is so great, why is Wikipedia Zero only
 available in developing countries (which we somehow make more pejorative
 by using the term Global South)? When will Wikipedia Zero be available
 in the United States or in the United Kingdom?

What's more--and this is central--Wikipedia Zero, by encouraging
higher usage of Wikipedia without additional costs to users, actually
increases demand on the mobile infrastructure. Providers will have to
increase capacity to handle the increased demand. In the long run,
this promotes overall increased internet access in the developing
world. That is an unalloyed positive result, in my view.

 Yeah... both Facebook and Google are trying to sell this same argument:
 they're in it to bring Internet to the world, nothing sinister about that!
 Of course, the reality is far different: both companies are primarily
 interested in mining and selling user data to advertisers. Strange
 bedfellows, to be sure.

 MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

[Mike Godwin]

MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 I can't say I watch PBS very much, but I do occasionally listen to NPR.
 And to borrow a phrase from the West Coast, I find those advertisements
 hella annoying and I certainly don't think we should emulate them.

If you have an alternative funding plan for NPR, you should publish it.

But I do take issue, perhaps
 not alone, with what I view as language subversion and manipulation, such
 as trying to redefine what constitutes advertising or net neutrality. I
 think there's great beauty in truth and honesty. And I think that's part
 of Wikimedia's values.

I take issue with being accused of language subversion and
manipulation. I invite you here not to accuse me of it any further.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 10:56 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:
 Comparisons to PBS/TV are not a useful pro-Wikipedia Zero argument ...

Nor was it offered as a pro-Wikipedia Zero argument! It is instead an
argument intended *specifically to underscore inconsistent standards
of analysis.* It is, instead, specifically addressed to the specific
complaint about interpreting banners as advertising. (Drilling down
even further: I don't see the banners on Wikipedia at all. So
necessarily the banners cannot be annoying to me.)

Since much of what you write is based on the misunderstanding that I
was using PBS as a pro-Wikipedia-Zero argument, I'm passing over the
misunderstanding without comment.

The larger issue: do we care more about Wikipedia's mission or more
about preserving some absolutist application of net neutrality? I
think Wikipedia's mission is more important, and you may disagree,
which is fine.

As I said in the piece, I care about both. But I also know that an
absolutely rigorous application of net neutrality--you know, the kind
of invariant principle that hobbyists who never to try to fund
anything themselves are prone to cook up--would require that emergency
phone calls (think 911 in the USA or 999 in the UK, for example) be
charged to the user.

Do you think emergency communications should be charged to the user by
the bit, John? If not, how do you justify that departure from
absolutist net-neutrality principles? And if you're not an absolutist
about net neutrality, then why can't you allow for the possibility
that access to Wikipedia may do more to help citizens of the
developing world than absolutist net neutrality will help them?

If you are comfortable condemning the developing world to charging
Wikipedia users for information by the bit for the indefinite future,
then by all means insist on network neutrality without exceptions.
(And certainly make sure that you enable all users to turn off
expensive emergency communications!)

But I seem to recall something about Wikipedia's providing the world's
information to everyone for free. The developing world needs to be
able to do this via mobile providers, whose business model is to
charge by the bit (or by the data plan).  I don't recall elevating net
neutrality as a principle above Wikipedia's mission.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

[Mike Godwin]

Tim Landscheidt writes:

 I think on the contrary Wikipedia Zero illustrates nicely
 why net neutrality is so important: Wikipedia Zero favours
 solely Wikipedia (und sister projects), while contradicting
 or simply other opinions and resources bite the dust.

I'm not following your reasoning here. I don't see any sense in which
Wikipedia Zero is contradicting other opinions or resulting in
resources that bite the dust. Wikipedia Zero is not rivalrous in any
economic sense that I'm aware of.

 This mainstreaming, forming a monopolistic cabal on all
 things information is why I am a strong proponent of net
 neutrality.  The ease with which information can be shared
 nowadays should be used so that more people provide their
 views, not more people consume one view.

So, you'd rather have users pay by the bit for Wikipedia on their
mobile devices? This does not serve Wikipedia or its users in the
developing world. The chart I use here shows you what the cost of
broadband access is in the developing world, which relies primarily on
mobile platforms.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141201000351-209165-wikipedia-zero-will-serve-net-neutrality

 And I have severe doubts that Wikipedia Zero fulfils actual
 needs from the perspective of sustainable development.

But you haven't said what those severe doubts are. Having spent the
last couple of years working on access projects in the developing
world, I haven't encountered an alternative model that doesn't result
in higher prices for subscribers. As the chart I reproduce indicates,
in some places in the developing world, the annual cost of broadband
access exceeds the average per capita income. I do not see how it
serves Wikipedia's mission to require individual users to pay so much
for Wikipedia access.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Superprotect user right, Comming to a wiki near you

[Mike Godwin]

Henning writes:

 To describe Eric's action I am tempted to use a
 metaphor that includes black uniforms and heavy boots. But that would
 not be appropriately written by a German to a German.

My experience over the last quarter century suggests that this
metaphor rarely works out well.


--Mike Godwin

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

??? writes:

On 02/06/2014 21:14, Mike Godwin wrote:

 Google has a clear purpose too, and it was no defense. Plus, there is
 a public-interest argument in favor of eschewing the erasure of true,
 accurate public data that happens to be old.


There is nothing in the judgement about erasing true, acaccurate public
data that happens to be old. The judgement is about collecting,
collating, and processing it, in away that is an invasion of privacy.

This is an incorrect characterization of the opinion. The ECJ said the
right to be forgotten applies when the data aggregated appear to be
inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation
to the purpose for which they were processed and in light of the time
that has elapsed. This does not mean invasion of privacy, which is
a term generally applied to information that has not previously been
published. By its nature, Google is not publishing information that
has never been published. -- it indexes and enables the retrieval of
information that has been previously published.

Whatever the right to be forgotten may turn out to be, it's not
about publication of previously unpublished information. Ergo, it's
not about invasion of privacy, broadly speaking. The opinion makes
clear that one can publish true, accurate, already-published
information and nevertheless be compelled to erase it by an individual
or entity invoking a right to be forgotten.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

Chris writes:

 I think there's a philosophical issue about privacy here. As far as I can
 see the ECJ interprets privacy as the right to enjoy a private life, and
 sees any party holding a significant amount of data about a private
 individual without good reason as a potential infringement on that right,
 regardless of whether that information was previously published or not.

But the ECJ opinion does not impose upon Google the obligation to
erase all the information about the complainant. The underlying facts
of the case (always a good idea to consult these!) relate to an order
from the Spanish Data Protection Authority to remove links to a
newspaper article  relating to the auction of complainant's house, 16
years ago, to recover social-security debts.

In general, possession of real estate, and public auctions of
real-estate by the government, are both public matters. Indeed, you
likely wouldn't want to live in a society in which they are not.

Furthermore, the newspaper itself is expressly not obligated to censor
its own databases, which adds the extra added benefit of philosophical
inconsistency.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:
 Would WMF, being in the US, need to worry about this to any greater degree
 than it worries about, say, Chinese publishing restrictions, or UK
 superinjunctions?

First, WMF operates globally, and while I took pains as general
counsel, just as the WMF legal team does now, to limit exposure around
the world, it is a mistake to suppose that jurisdictional protections
are invariably impenetrable. See my discussion here on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqQOvxyj66w .

Second, the ECJ decision can be used to go after editors individually,
or organized WMF-affiliated groups.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Chris Keating
chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote:

  I don't believe Wikipedia could be a data controller as it has no legal
  personality, and legal personality is quite difficult to acquire when
  you
  set out to avoid acquiring it.

 On this point I must disagree.

WMF is a legal entity. The editors are legal entities. The affiliated
groups are legal entities. And there is nothing in the EU directive
that requires what you are calling a legal personality.

 I think also though that if editors are potentially liable, then so are
 legal persons that engage in similar activity. Say for instance a European
 Wikimedia chapter engaged with a national archive to update Wikidata with a
 few million records, including some on living people. Arguably both of them
 could be acting as data controllers on those records for the rest of the
 duration of Wikidata. Hm.

Now you are beginning to glimpse the scope of the ECJ opinion.

 Google has a clear purpose too, and it was no defense. Plus, there is
 a public-interest argument in favor of eschewing the erasure of true,
 accurate public data that happens to be old.


 This is all the case, but the decision makes it clear that this is a
 question in striking a balance between the interests of the data subject
 (the right to be forgotten, i.e. the ability to enjoy a private life), and
 the interests of others. This derives from Article 7(f) of the original
 directive.

Not exactly. The case makes it clear that it is *asserting* that it
is striking a balance, but when you read the specific language as a
lawyer, it's clear that, regardless of what the ECJ says, there is no
limiting principle regarding the scope of application.

 It also makes it clear that this balance may be struck in different places
 in different situations; for instance at Paragraph 81, talking about the
 balance of public interest in people who have taken a role in public life[1]
 who are arguably the sort we cover in our articles.

There's that makes it clear language again. Do you really suppose
Wikipedia information about individuals is limited to those who have
(presumably voluntarily) taken a role in public life?

When did this person --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dannielynn_Birkhead_paternity_case --
volunteer to take a role in public life?

 I'd agree that there is no clarity about what would happen if someone
 pursued this course of action with Wikipedia, but there are many differences
 between our case and Google's...

Not really, if you read the precise language of the decision.
Certainly, every other lawyer I've asked about this agrees with me
that Wikipedia fits the definition of controller under the directive
and the ECJ decision.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Does the ECJ need to establish jurisdiction over Wikimedia or specific users
 (presumably only those users directly involved in creating or curating the
 content in dispute)? We've seen in some situations in the past (e.g. with
 the DCRI and frwp) where governments have targeted users within their
 jurisdiction to demand information or actions. Could that happen here?

Clearly, the EU doesn't need to establish jurisdiction over EU
citizens who happen to be Wikimedians, since it already has it. The
same is true with regard to affiliated organizations in the EU.  Plus,
and this is something that bears repeating, there is no particular
reason to think that the EU might not claim it has jurisdiction over
Wikimedia Foundation, even if it might have a hard time imposing it.

Even claims of jurisdiction without merit can be problematic, as I
explain here; http://youtu.be/wqQOvxyj66w.

 Should the WMF choose to refuse to implement the directive, could the ECJ
 pursue penalties against the income stream of donations, or grant funding
 disbursed to WMF-related entities in the EU? Could the WMF seek exemptions
 under Article 9, or would we run into jurisdictional risks by doing that?

I wouldn't think any funds given to, or disbursed from, WMF in the EU
would be immune.

 In Article 23, it reads The controller may be exempted from this liability,
 in whole or in part, if he proves that he is not responsible for the event
 giving rise to the damage. Does this, perhaps in conjunction with the
 Section 230 status of the WMF, provide some cover?

Article 23's language would not be interpreted as providing
Section-230-like protection, if I read EU law correctly.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

Chris writes:

 If as a private citizen in the EU you construct a card-file index of
 newspaper cuttings (or any other kind of database) including personal
 details about a group of individuals, you are becoming both a data
 processor and data controller.

I think that's the plain meaning of the ECJ decision.

 It would be hard to argue that a Wikipedia article  or Wikidata entry does
 not represent personal data in a retrievable form.

I agree here too.

 It would be an interesting question whether the Wikimedia Foundation or
 individual Wikimedians were data processors and controllers. The court would
 have to decide who was the controller of this data, if indeed there was
 one.

My intuition is that a European court, and certainly the ECJ, would be
likely to hold either or both WMF and individual Wikimedians liable.
No need to choose between one or the other, given the breadth of the
definitions.

 I don't believe Wikipedia could be a data controller as it has no legal
 personality, and legal personality is quite difficult to acquire when you
 set out to avoid acquiring it.

On this point I must disagree.

  However, even if my line of thinking is correct, I think Wikipedia's
 existing policies wouldn't need much amendment. Processing of personal data
 is allowed so long as it complies with the various duties on data
 processors, e.g. being accurate and processed for a legitimate purpose.

Accuracy is no defense! That's one of the chief lessons of the ECJ
opinion. And building an encyclopedia is not named as a legitimate
purpose by the ECJ. (If it were, all Google would have to do is
revive its own experiment in encyclopedias, Knol, but this time give
it a compatible Creative Commons license.)

 We have quite a clear purpose in processing data - the provision of an
 encyclopedia. We already limit ourselves to truthful and accurate coverage
 of data subjects (e.g. the BLP policy); and we already have something
 analogous to a public-interest test as to whether we process this data at
 all (the notability principle).

Google has a clear purpose too, and it was no defense. Plus, there is
a public-interest argument in favor of eschewing the erasure of true,
accurate public data that happens to be old.

Plus, it must be said, Wikimedia Foundation is not well-positioned to
litigate these issues again and again in Europe.


--Mike



On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:02 PM, Chris Keating
chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote:



 On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 6:39 PM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:

 Chris writes:

  As I understand it, the right to be forgotten will only affect the
  discoverability of content, rather than existence of content.
 
  So if we rely on a source which says that person X did Y many years ago,
  and X succeeds in invoking their right to be forgotten, then the
  source
  will no longer appear in search engine results. The source, whether
  offline
  or online, will continue to exist and will continue to be a valid
  reference.
 
  My understanding may well be wrong, and if there is anything that
  summarises this issue as it affects Wikimedians I would be really
  interested to read it.

 Your understanding is essentially correct, as far as it goes. The ECJ
 (aka Curia) opinion makes clear that the decision applies to search
 engines but not (yet) to the databases of source journals (such as The
 New York Times or the Guardian).

 But of course it can affect the work of Wikipedia editors and other
 Wikimedians looking for online sources if search engine results can be
 censored in this way. In addition, it seems possible that the ECJ
 opinion can be understood to apply to Wikipedia itself, which, while
 not a search engine, may qualify as a controller as that word is
 defined under Article 2 of Directive 95/46 of the European Parliament
 (on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of
 personal data and on the free movement of such data).  Look at these
 relevant definitions from the text of the ECJ opinion:


 Hi Mike - thanks for the reply! Having looked and thought about it in a bit
 more depth, I am pretty sure that you're right and that a case can be made
 this precedent will apply to Wikimedians and possibly the Wikimedia
 Foundation.

 Whether that is something we need to worry about is another issue, but this
 is my reasoning (obviously I'm not a lawyer, etc, and I doubt this post
 contains anything you don't already know but it's a useful thought process
 for me);

 If as a private citizen in the EU you construct a card-file index of
 newspaper cuttings (or any other kind of database) including personal
 details about a group of individuals, you are becoming both a data
 processor and data controller.

 This judgement determines that Google's indexing of information about an
 individual is covered by the rules that apply to data processors and
 controllers. Google argued that their work was not covered, a) because they
 did not know the contents of their own data

[Wikimedia-l] Applying the Right to Be Forgotten to Wikipedia (Was Re: Right to be forgotten)

[Mike Godwin]

Chris writes:

 As I understand it, the right to be forgotten will only affect the
 discoverability of content, rather than existence of content.

 So if we rely on a source which says that person X did Y many years ago,
 and X succeeds in invoking their right to be forgotten, then the source
 will no longer appear in search engine results. The source, whether offline
 or online, will continue to exist and will continue to be a valid reference.

 My understanding may well be wrong, and if there is anything that
 summarises this issue as it affects Wikimedians I would be really
 interested to read it.

Your understanding is essentially correct, as far as it goes. The ECJ
(aka Curia) opinion makes clear that the decision applies to search
engines but not (yet) to the databases of source journals (such as The
New York Times or the Guardian).

But of course it can affect the work of Wikipedia editors and other
Wikimedians looking for online sources if search engine results can be
censored in this way. In addition, it seems possible that the ECJ
opinion can be understood to apply to Wikipedia itself, which, while
not a search engine, may qualify as a controller as that word is
defined under Article 2 of Directive 95/46 of the European Parliament
(on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of
personal data and on the free movement of such data).  Look at these
relevant definitions from the text of the ECJ opinion:



Article 2 of Directive 95/46 states that ‘[f]or the purposes of
this Directive:

(a)  “personal data” shall mean any information relating to an
identified or identifiable natural person (“data subject”); an
identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or
indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or
to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological,
mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

(b)   “processing of personal data” (“processing”) shall mean any
operation or set of operations which is performed upon personal data,
whether or not by automatic means, such as collection, recording,
organisation, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval,
consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or
otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking,
erasure or destruction;

...

(d)  “controller” shall mean the natural or legal person, public
authority, agency or any other body which alone or jointly with others
determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data;
where the purposes and means of processing are determined by national
or Community laws or regulations, the controller or the specific
criteria for his nomination may be designated by national or Community
law;

...

Article 9 of Directive 95/46, entitled ‘Processing of personal
data and freedom of expression’, provides:

‘Member States shall provide for exemptions or derogations from the
provisions of this Chapter, Chapter IV and Chapter VI for the
processing of personal data carried out solely for journalistic
purposes or the purpose of artistic or literary expression only if
they are necessary to reconcile the right to privacy with the rules
governing freedom of expression.’

---

(Note that processing of personal data need not be done by
automatic means. I read this to mean that Wikipedia editors
themselves may qualify as engaging in the processing of personal
data. And the definition of controller expressly includes a
natural ... person.

Assuming that Member States would assert jurisdiction over Wikipedia
(even though Wikipedia is hosted in the United States), could
Wikipedia articles be defended under the solely for journalistic
purposes or the purpose of artistic or literary expression language
of Article 9 of the Directive? That language doesn't strike me as a
very good fit for what Wikipedia does.

The English-language version of the full text of the opinion is here:
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=docid=152065pageIndex=0doclang=ENmode=reqdir=occ=firstpart=1cid=95716
.

Ilario writes:

 But I think that something will change for users writing content (no more
 references in the main search engine) but also to discover copyright
 infringements.

And, possibly much more than that, as I suggest above.

Not impossibly, and assuming EU can establish jurisdiction of
Wikimedia Foundation or its agents or its volunteer editors, this
particular news story might have turned out differently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html?_r=0 .


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection and Harassment Policy (also relevant to A personal note)

[Mike Godwin]

Hi, Wil (and greetings to all my Wikimedian friends here!).

I've been catching up on the Wikimedia-L threads, and of course I've
come across your many postings and your engagement, sometimes tense,
with other posters here. I have some sympathy for your reactions and
questions: I've had some similar experiences myself, dating in
particular from the first year I served on WMF's staff as general
counsel. My own experience was colored by the fact that I knew my
intentions were good, I was reasonably certain I was a smart, even
sociable guy, and so why was it that some significant portion of what
I posted generated friction on what was supposed to be an inclusive,
Assume-Good-Faith mailing list?

I think I realized reasonably quickly that, precisely because I
assumed my own good faith, I wasn't always alert to my cultural
missteps, even though I knew at an intellectual level that this
mailing list, unlike some others, is a community. For a community,
when a new individual appears out of nowhere and begins to assert
himself or herself, and launches into extended criticisms of so many
things he (or she) encounters, the natural, human reaction is not to
automatically embrace the newcomer for his or her contributions to
diversity and insight, but instead to wonder, Hey, why hasn't he made
the effort to learn about our history and traditions and norms and
expectations?  *This phenomenon is entirely human and normal*, but it
still sometimes requires a bit of a bumpy transition, even if you know
(intellectually, at least) to expect it.

So, what I'm suggesting is, when you respond by trying to call
attention to the friction your (comparatively) abrupt dive into this
community has generated for you, what you may be calling attention to
is not something pathological about a mailing list but instead just a
part of the human condition. If you're patient, you can take a breath
or two, maybe even a short break, and come back to the list and give
as much attention to the issues and problems for the Wikimedia
movement as you like, and over time get better reactions/reception.

My own experience was that, over time, most Wikimedians had a chance
to observe my commitment as a Wikimedian, and in my role as WMF's
lawyer, to protect and advance the projects with the same fierceness
with which I sometimes, particularly early on, expressed my opinions
on the mailing lists and on the wikis. No doubt the potential is there
for you to have the same experience.

There is one important, though, between your experience and mine, and
if I were in your position I would give it some thought. Specifically,
your partner is only ever going to have one first month, and only one
first year, as the new executive director of WMF. If I were in your
position, I would give her as much breathing space and community
mindshare as I could to create her own first impressions, to find her
own themes, and to set the tone for her long-term role as executive
director. I might even take a month off with regard to participating
in public discussions -- *even though I wouldn't have to, and even
though some of the reactions to what I'd written seem unfair to me* --
just to let my partner establish her own role without any distractions
I might cause. Lila's job is tough and challenging, and she will need
all the support she can get. You may find that one way you can support
her in the very near term is to step away from tense exchanges (or
maybe all public exchanges on the lists) for a while -- even though
you may feel, with some sense of righteousness, that you shouldn't
have to do this.

I agree that in an ideal world you shouldn't have to. But in the human
world we live in, if I were in your position, I'd give this approach a
month or so, just as an exercise, and as a way of showing support for
my partner's taking the reins of an unusually difficult, but also
culturally unique enterprise.

You haven't solicited my advice on any of this, of course. But I hope
you appreciate that you're hearing it from someone who himself has
been outspoken on the lists, who is sometimes critical of community
responses and norms, who has been publicly criticized from time to
time,  but who also has found that it's really helpful, especially in
the earliest days of engagement with a new community, to listen as
much as talk. I think of myself as a Wikimedian, and my ongoing
engagement with the movement and the community is one of general
respect and regard, even when I disagree with their consensus, as I
frequently do.

I hope this note is taken in the spirit in which it is written.

Thanks for your attention.


--Mike Godwin
Senior Legal Advisor, Global Internet Policy Project, Internews
General Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation, 2007-2010

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why not everyone have the right to vote in the Board FDC elections?

[Mike Godwin]

Sue writes:


Interesting thread, Itzik --- to be honest, I had forgotten that staff had
 been granted the right to vote regardless of edit count. I wouldn't be
 surprised if the only staff members who do vote are those who would qualify
 under the edit count requirement anyway.

 Seems to me that rather than creating new exemptions from the edit count
 requirement, we might be better off to lower the number of edits required
 so that anybody who's demonstrated interest in the projects would qualify.
 If edits on meta, mediawiki, outreach, etc., qualify, and we were to lower
 the edit count requirement, then I think that would be inclusive of
 most/all contributors. Would something like that make sense?


It makes sense to me. I think many thoughtful people recognize that the
edit-count requirement is a fairly weak metric of engagement in the
Wikimedia community. I also think the exemptions actually have reflected
the same recognition -- that someone who is not a dedicated editor may be a
committed and contributing member of the community in other ways than
super-numerous recent edits.

That there should be some threshold of engagement I think is necessary to
prevent capture of WMF board, but I'm not sure it needs to be as high as it
is right now.

FWIW, when I was on staff I did not vote for WMF board positions, even
though I could, because I thought it was important in the role I was
playing to recuse myself from engagement in the elections. I don't think
that reasoning would apply to all staff members, but it felt applicable in
my particular case.


--Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF Policy and Political Affiliations Guideline

[Mike Godwin]

Michael Snow writes:

 Perhaps worth adding, I think it's fair to say that these reviews did
 take place with respect to the use of Wikimedia Foundation resources in
 the context of the January SOPA protest. They didn't necessarily follow
 the form of the current policy, since it didn't exist yet, but Geoff was
 actively involved and I believe the staff was generally quite conscious
 of the limitations on what they should do in their official capacity.
 There's always room for honest disagreement about whether the protest
 was desirable or necessary, but just in terms of the process, I think
 things were entirely appropriately handled.

I agree with Michael Snow's take on all this.

 I agree that the community retains the authority to reach its own
 decisions about future actions of this type. I think the policy should
 be understood primarily as something the foundation will adhere to in
 its operations, not something that regulates the community's autonomy.

And I especially agree with this. One of the greatest strengths and
protections in the Wikimedia movement, both for the community and the
Foundation, is the community's autonomy. The community has the
autonomy to make decisions that may include certain kinds of political
action from time to time, and the Foundation is able to function
within its legal constraints because community members are not (for
the most part) agents or employees of the Foundation.

I think Geoff and his team are doing an excellent job at further
developing and strengthening appropriate legal protections for the
Foundation while preserving the community's ability to act
independently, including (what I hope will mostly be unnecessary) the
ability to act and speak out politically.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

Anthony writes:

I wonder if the WMF will shut down in protest should one of the
proposals to amend the constitution to overturn Citizens United gain
traction in Congress.

I'm not speaking for WMF, but I don't see the connection here.
Wikimedia Foundation, as a corporation, is profoundly regulated in
what it can and cannot do politically, and is even more regulated by
virtue of its being a nonprofit corporation (NGO). There's no Citizens
United connection with regard to anything being discussed here.

As is generally known, I favored the English Wikipedia blackout with
regard to SOPA/PIPA, and I also supported the Italian Wikimedians'
earlier blackout, driven by fear of (effectively) similar regulation.

At the heart of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects' success is
democratic action, driven by those who are engaged in the process of
promoting, supporting, and maintaining these projects. So my instinct
is to believe, respect, and support the Russian-language Wikimedia
project activists' decision to demonstrate in an effective way that
what we all are working on here is under threat by ill-considered
legislation by legacy governmental traditions that are used to having
their own top-down way.

To my Russian comrades: I am with you.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

 I'm not speaking for WMF, but I don't see the connection here.

 The connection is free speech.

Analytically, however, the issue raised by Citizens United is not
simply an issue of free speech. It centers on the precise question of
what role corporate expenditures can play in elections. It does not
address the question of whether corporations can engage in political
activity.

 Wikimedia Foundation, as a corporation, is profoundly regulated in
 what it can and cannot do politically

 What regulations are you referring to?  Corporations can't *deduct*
 certain political expenditures.  But what are the profound regulations
 on what it can do politically?

See, e.g., 
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/limits-political-campaigning-501c3-nonprofits-29982.html
and http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicl03.pdf.

 WMF is engaging in lobbying, a form of political speech.  In the
 Citizens United decision, the Court held that the First Amendment
 prohibited the government from restricting independent political
 expenditures by corporations and unions.

 The connection is quite obvious.

Not merely obvious but quite obvious, eh? Well, in the United States
cases like Citizens United and its predecessors center precisely on
election campaigns (including the ways money can be spent on issue
campaigning aimed at influencing the outcome of elections of
candidates for public office).

I'm unaware of the Wikimedia Foundation's attempting to influence an
election. I'm also unaware of any how Citizens United applies even
remotely the subject matter of this thread, which I had understood to
center on Russian legislation, not (for example) on a Russian
election.

But perhaps you're making a one of those obvious (excuse me, I mean
quite obvious) connections that is too subtle for me to follow.
Speaking only for myself, I remain cheered by the Russian-language
Wikimedians' activism.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

 Analytically, however, the issue raised by Citizens United is not
 simply an issue of free speech. It centers on the precise question of
 what role corporate expenditures can play in elections.

 The law in question was with respect to electioneering
 communications, which the court held was speech.

If you are expressing a disagreement with my characterization of the
issue in Citizens United, I'm unclear what that disagreement is.

 Political activity is awfully broad.  The ruling was primarily
 concerned with political speech.

That's imprecise. The case centered on the scope of Congress's power
to regulate speech aimed at affecting elections.

 First of all, you selectively quoted me, cutting out the part where I
 made it obvious that I was talking about regulations that apply to
 corporations in general.  I specifically pointed out that there are
 regulations which apply to 501(c)(3) organizations.

I hadn't understood you to be talking also about for-profit
corporations such as The New York Times Company, which (if you happen
to read the Times) you may know sometimes tries to affect the outcome
of elections.

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

 If you prohibit corporations from attempting to influence an election,
 what's the big leap from prohibiting them from attempting to influence
 legislation?

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.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

I wrote:

'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.'

That paragraph got truncated through an editing error.

What I meant to write was this:

'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). And I wouldn't want to
prohibit The New York Times Company from political speech regarding
legislation or policy.'


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Anthony wikim...@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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

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

 Well, no, you didn't.

I think most people will agree that I did give you pointers to the
regs. I agree that I did not give you direct links to the regs.
Perhaps you understood pointers to mean direct links.

 I also explained to you that IRC 501(c)(3) does not prohibit certain
 corporations from performing certain actions, rather it *defines*
 certain corporations which do not perform certain actions.

This is all lovely, but I am still unclear as to what you believe you
are disagreeing with me about.

 I figured
 you would confirm this by reading the code.

I didn't see much point in rereading those provisions, because I
didn't understand what exactly you were taking issue with me on. I'm
not sure anyone else does either. Perhaps someone else could explain
your disagreement with me, because I'm drawing a blank here in what
I'm reading from you.

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

 Nothing.  My comment was about a proposed constitutional amendment to
 overturn Citizen United, and I gave that as an example of something
 that is even more important than PIPA for Wikipedians to protest.

Why Wikipedians in particular? Citizens United (not Citizen United)
has to do with campaign expenditures. So far as I know, neither WMF
nor Wikimedians have any interest, one way or the other, in attempts
to regulate campaign expenditures, or constitutional amendments
regarding same.


--Mike

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Mike Godwin]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:

 Okay.  Is there something in those regs which regulates what WMF can
 and cannot do politically?  All I see is regulations stating that WMF
 may be taxed based on what is does.

I'm afraid I don't understand the distinction you're making.

 When you said Wikimedia Foundation, as a corporation, is profoundly
 regulated in what it can and cannot do politically, I thought you
 were referring to some regulation(s) outside of the internal revenue
 code.  Were you?

No.


--Mike

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