Re: [Wikimedia-l] Blocking of HTTPS connection by China

[Anthony]

This response seems to miss the fact that, in this particular case,
censorship is being accomplished through eavesdropping.


On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:24 PM, Matthew Roth  wrote:

> Hi all,
> I wanted to share a clarifying email from Ryan Lane in WMF Ops. He's
> working through the challenges of HTTPS from the Foundation's end.
>
> Please see below for more details:
>
> -Matthew
>
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 2:31 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
>
> > How does it impact people? Short answer: it shouldn't. Long answer: It
> may
> > make the site slightly slower due to increased network latency, and it is
> > slightly more computationally expensive, which may make the site slower
> on
> > computers that are underpowered.
> >
> > How does it impact the WMF? It depends. For enabling it for logged-in
> > users, or for those that use HTTPS-anywhere? It doesn't affect us,
> because
> > that's the state we're in right now. For making HTTPS the default for
> > anonymous users? We need to change how our infrastructure works. We may
> > need to buy additional hardware. We definitely need to do some
> engineering
> > work.
> >
> > How does it impact the government's ability to apply censorship? Short
> > answer: it doesn't. It affects their ability to eavesdrop on people. Long
> > answer: It depends on how sophisticated the government's censorship
> program
> > is. In some countries the government's censorship program can be totally
> > bypassed using HTTPS. China's program is very sophisticated. The best
> HTTPS
> > is going to help the Chinese is to give them a reasonable amount of
> > protection against eavesdropping. It's still possible for China to
> > eavesdrop, even when users are using HTTPS, if China has subverted any of
> > the Certificate Authorities trusted by our browsers.
> >
> > Are there negative sides of each choice? Yes. Not providing HTTPS means
> > that users will always be subject to eavesdropping, which in very
> > authoritative countries could mean they are imprisoned or killed for
> > reading or editing Wikipedia, depending on what they are reading or
> > editing. Realistically not making HTTPS the default is similar to not
> > providing it for all intents and purposes. Search engines will bring
> people
> > to the HTTP version of the site, not the HTTPS version so the vast
> majority
> > of users will still be able to be eavesdropped on. Making HTTPS the
> default
> > also has negatives. A very small minority of users don't have HTTPS
> > support, or their computers are so old that it makes the site unusably
> > slow. That's a *very* small percentage of users, though. Additionally, it
> > makes the site slower for everyone, which may cause a decrease in viewers
> > and/or editors.
> >
> > This is likely the most non-technical way I can explain things. I hope it
> > helps!
> >
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Benjamin Chen 
> wrote:
>
> > On 8 Jun, 2013, at 12:24 AM, Matthew Roth  wrote:
> >
> > > We have had contact with the authors of the blog and they have said
> they
> > > will publish our response to their article, though I'm not sure when or
> > in
> > > what format.
> >
> > Great. That's really fast response.
> >
> > On the issue itself, we haven't seen any large scale blocks for years
> > (around the time since last time Jimbo visited some Chinese official more
> > than 4 or 5 years ago I think).
> >
> > The secure.wikimedia domain was blocked long ago, but they waited till
> now
> > to block HTTPS, after 3 years? (I can't remember when it was enabled). I
> > wonder how long it took for them to realise.
> >
> > It is suggested that this could be a long term block similar to how
> > secure.wikimedia was blocked - for HTTPS they have no control over
> content,
> > so they are simply blocking it all. For HTTP they are still performing
> deep
> > package inspection (means content censoring), so since they can filter
> what
> > the Chinese people can see, it's likely that they'll leave HTTP alone.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Benjamin Chen / [[User:Bencmq]]
> > ___
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> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> Matthew Roth
> Global Communications Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> +1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
> www.wikimediafoundation.org
> *http://blog.wikimedia.org/*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Blocking of HTTPS connection by China

[Anthony]

What is this "hard-enabled" and "soft-enabled"?  If the Chinese volunteer
editor community requests that HTTPS be "soft-enabled" for them, and you do
so, does that solve anything?

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Matthew Roth  wrote:

> We've also hard-enabled HTTPS on all of our
> private wikis and have soft-enabled HTTPS on a single wiki (Uzbek
> Wikipedia), when it was requested by the volunteer editor community there."
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Blocking of HTTPS connection by China

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Brad Jorsch  wrote:

> "Hard-enabled", on the other hand, means that anyone fetching the http
> URL would be redirected to the corresponding https URL.[2] If this
> were somehow done now, then people in China would not be able to read
> Wikipedia at all because the http links would just redirect to https
> and then China's firewall would block the https request. The blog post
> mentioned earlier in this thread hopes that that would make China back
> down and unblock https to Wikipedia.


That might not even work, if they decide to return the contents of the
(proxied) https page rather than the redirect.

Bleh, that's depressing.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

There is plenty of reason to think the government would be interested in
Wikipedia access logs.

On the other hand, there's very little reason to believe an organization
when they say they haven't been turning over information under a top secret
order which they're not allowed to tell anyone about.

On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Nathan  wrote:

> I think an official statement would be unnecessary and ill advised. It
> doesn't affect Wikimedia projects, there is no reason to think it
> does, and involving itself would be a mistake the WMF can and should
> avoid.
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Christophe Henner
>  wrote:
> > My understanding is that PRISM focused on private electronic
> > communication. I can't see a situation where we would be concerned by
> > that.
> >
> > But some official statement could help put at ease people worries :)
> > --
> > Christophe
> >
> >
> > On 10 June 2013 03:34, Fred Bauder  wrote:
> >> All edits and other actions are archived, but I would think there would
> >> be zero interest or utility to NSA. I would simply ignore the matter.
> >>
> >> Fred
> >>
> >>> This is a simple question with a potentially very complicated
> answer.
> >>>
> >>> What, if any, are the implications of the PRISM scandal for Wikimedia?
> >>> Does the fact that our servers are based in the US now compromise our
> >>> mission either in a technical, privacy or an ethical sense?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> - Liam / Wittylama
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> wittylama.com
> >>> Peace, love & metadata
> >>> ___
> >>> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> >>> Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ___
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> >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 10:53 PM, Benoit Landry wrote:

> What "information" could the WMF disclose that isn't already available to
> some volunteers anyhow?


I don't know what information "some volunteers" have access to, who
qualifies as "some volunteers" (does the board qualify?), or why it matters
whether or not a person is a volunteer.

By access logs I meant HTTP access logs.  It's pretty clear that without
taking extraordinary measures, what you're editing is not anonymous.  But
some people are probably under the impression that what they're reading and
searching (and linking from) is private.

The IP addresses of logged-in editors are visible to volunteer CUs;


En-masse, or one-request-at-a-time?

deleted revisions and log entries are visible to all volunteers admins.
> Wikipedia's inherently a pretty transparent system...
>

Transparent?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:05 AM, Craig Franklin
wrote:

> I wouldn't say that there's nothing to worry about, but at the same time I
> doubt we're near the top of the spooks' priority list.
>

Maybe not priority-wise, but remember that the cooperation between
Mediawiki developers and the CIA goes back several years at the least.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:10 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> Everything passing over the internet is archived. Nearly everything done
> at Wikipedia passes over the internet.
>

Encrypted, if you're using https everywhere (and Wikipedia hasn't
intentionally or unintentionally compromised their certificate).
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:21 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> Correct. If Osama Bin Laden had been editing Wikipedia, before his death
> of course, through some account in Pakistan, it would have been rather
> reasonable to respond favorable to a request for information. But "plenty
> of reason to think the government would be interested in Wikipedia access
> logs" No, massive amounts of information about people doing ordinary
> things like editing articles about Homer Simpson is kind of the opposite
> of intelligence; it IS the haystack, not the needle.
>

And yet, PRISM is exactly about collecting the full haystack.  And it makes
sense, if you ignore the privacy implications:  Collect everything in your
multi-zetabyte storage device, even if you aren't going to analyze it right
away.

And yeah, editing articles about Homer Simpson is one thing.  Editing
articles about the Tea Party, on the other hand...

Fred, you used to be a lawyer.  How would you like the government to have
access to all the Wikipedia searches (and google searches which linked to
Wikipedia) done from your office?  Might that not compromise your ability
to defend alleged criminals?
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Theo10011  wrote:

> I'm not sure how that would have any
> bearing on Wikipedia though, the purpose there is to write an article, fix
> typos, add pictures, occasionally there is cross-communication between
> different editors.


Wikipedia is not a top traffic website from people editing.  99% of the
traffic is reading/searching.

We know that people's Google searches have been used against them in
court.  I'm not aware of any cases where Wikipedia searches have been
used.  But I can't imagine why they'd be any different.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

> >> Encrypted, if you're using https everywhere (and Wikipedia hasn't
> > intentionally or unintentionally compromised their certificate).
> >>
> >
> > But simple encryption that NSA can break at will.
>
> No one will bother trying to break SSL/TLS. The NSA certainly doesn't
> need to. They can just sign their own certificates and perform
> man-in-the-middle attacks. Browsers will in most cases accept those
> forged certificates, since the NSA can make sure that they are signed by
> a CA trusted by many browsers.
>

HTTPS Everywhere (which I mentioned) includes a "Decentralized SSL
Observatory" to try to detect exactly this.  If the NSA wants to keep their
spying a secret, they won't do a MITM attack, because they'd get caught.

I suspect if they were doing this with a significant portion of traffic,
they'd have been caught by now, and that it'd be a story I would have heard
of.

So what's left is breaking the encryption after the fact.  I'm not aware of
how much difficulty this is (or even what encryption is used by Wikipedia),
but it's probably going to slow the process down to where they're less
likely to go on pure fishing expeditions.  Once they have a target, sure,
but just to make lists of people viewing certain Wikipedia articles, I
doubt it.

Maybe if the algorithm itself has been broken, or NSA has a whole lot of
quantum computers the public doesn't know about, or something like that,
but otherwise, I don't see them doing this en-masse.  Storing the encrypted
communications en-masse for later cracking, maybe.

Or maybe I'm wrong about the difficulty of breaking Wikipedia's HTTPS.
Anyone have any figures?  Should Wikipedia be using stronger encryption?
(A quick search shows that there might be a problem with RC4:
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/03/16/has-https-finally-been-cracked/)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Theo10011  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> > We know that people's Google searches have been used against them in
> > court.  I'm not aware of any cases where Wikipedia searches have been
> > used.  But I can't imagine why they'd be any different.
>
> Because one is a search engine and the other is an encyclopedia. If someone
> was researching ways to make explosives or looking for child pornography,
> those are grounds to incriminate.


First of all, no there isn't.  Certainly not for "researching ways to make
explosives", anyway.  Perhaps "looking for child pornography" could somehow
be construed as "attempted possession of child pornography", but even that
would be stretching it.

Wikipedia on the other hand is an
> encyclopedia. There is nothing illegal about going in to a library and
> looking at a physical encyclopedia, nor should there be about Wikipedia.
>

That there's nothing illegal about it is the whole point.  Were it illegal
to view certain articles on Wikipedia, that the government would be able to
violate the privacy of those doing so wouldn't even be a question.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> You are right, Anthony, never assume you're not dealing with idiots. If
> NSA is doing doing detailed surveillance of Tea Party activists or
> defense lawyers we are truly well along the road to hell.
>

Maybe we are.  It certainly wouldn't be unprecedented for the government to
engage in witch hunts against certain political groups.  Granted, it's more
likely to be the FBI that has a file on Tea Party groups than the NSA, but
still...

Tea Party groups was, of course, just an example.  John Vandenberg gave a
somewhat larger list.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:15 PM, Luis Villa  wrote:

> We should have a blog post up within the next few days to discuss
> PRISM and our values in more detail; we will pass that along here when
> it is posted.


Thanks.  I do appreciate this.  And it seems to be better worded than the
statements of the Google and Facebook founders (which said that they had
never heard of PRISM, not that they hadn't participated in it, and
certainly not that they've never received a FISA subpoena).

One thing I'd also appreciate is that if indeed Wikipedia access logs are
not even collected in the first place (except for 1/1000 samples), that
this be stated officially, rather than relying on a two-year-old comment by
a single, now-former employee.

Anyone who truly needs to keep their Wikipedia use confidential should, of
course, still take measures to anonymize their access.  But for the rest of
the time, an assurance that these logs are simply not being kept is
reassuring.

Something in the privacy policy saying this would be best.  But I've
suggested this in the past, and WMF has declined on the grounds that they
want to leave flexibility should they decide to do full logging in the
future.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 7:13 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> e.g. "we have never received or honored an NSA or FISA subpoena or
> order" is good (and far better than I've seen from Google or
> Facebook), but ...
>
> does that exclude all possible orders under the Patriot Act?
> does that exclude orders from any U.S. Government agency?  e.g. FBI?
>

Apparently "if it's your communications records the government is after,
they're more likely to use a National Security Letter" (
https://ssd.eff.org/foreign/fisa)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 10:06 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
> >One thing I'd also appreciate is that if indeed Wikipedia access logs are
> >not even collected in the first place (except for 1/1000 samples), that
> >this be stated officially, rather than relying on a two-year-old comment
> >by a single, now-former employee.
>
> Minor point: I can't tell for sure if this is a reference to Domas, but if
> so, he "only" ever served as a Wikimedia Foundation Board member and
> volunteer sysadmin, never as an employee, as far as I know.
>

Ah yes.  I was mistaken.  Did a quick look at his LinkedIn page, which said
"Data & Performance Engineer", and negligently assumed that meant
"employee".

I mostly agree with the rest of your post.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 5:52 AM, Mathieu Stumpf <
psychosl...@culture-libre.org> wrote:

> Le 2013-06-10 16:01, John Vandenberg a écrit :
>
>  It would be good *if* the WMF can provide assurances to editors that
>> they havent received any national security letters or other 'trawling'
>> requests from any U.S. agency.
>>
>
> I doubt they can. Even if they say so, how do you check? May be you can
> teach people what trusting mean, and what are logical limits of trusting.
> But, to my mind, your proposal would be misguiding people on what is trust.


Do the letters require people to lie?  If they did, is that something that
could be challenged in regular, non-secret court (perhaps with some parts
of the lawsuit "under seal" or something)?

On the other hand, the value of this is rather limited.  If the WMF can't
say it, it could mean that it once received a secret subpoena regarding the
IP addresses of someone they had probable cause to believe was involved
with some specific terrorist plot.  Or it could mean they got a letter
requiring all their logs all the time in perpetuity.

If you really need your web browsing to be anonymous, what can you do?
HTTPS plus an anonymizing proxy plus noscript gets you some level of
security.  If your browsing habits can reveal your courtroom defense
strategy, is this simple form of anonymization enough to trust the freedom
of your client?  Maybe it depends on how big of a target your client is.
If your client is Martin Luther King Jr., and J. Edgar Hoover is the
President, maybe you've gotta take a few steps beyond a simple anonymizing
proxy.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 8:09 AM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> There will always be humans maintaining the system who must, in order to
> do their work, have potential access to everything.


No, there isn't.  This statement is about as recklessly false as your
previous one that WMF didn't have the logs.


> We have them here in our developers who have access to our databases.
>

Putting everything in a single database which can be accessed by a single
developer is a choice.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Marc A. Pelletier wrote:

> On 06/11/2013 08:19 AM, Anthony wrote:
> > Putting everything in a single database which can be accessed by a single
> > developer is a choice.
>
> It is, also, the only *reasonable* choice given the resources at our
> disposal.
>

Maybe (*).  But my comment was in response to "There will always be humans
maintaining the system who must, in order to do their work, have potential
access to everything."  That the commenter extended this to everyone
regardless of their resources is evident from the example of Snowden (who
didn't have anywhere near access to everything anyway).

(*) Which is to say, no, I disagree, but I don't feel like arguing about it.

Put another way: I can see at /least/ two dozen vectors for the NSA (or
> whichever acronym agency you prefer) to get at every single octet under
> WMF control without us being able to even know about it.


Legally?

There is nothing we can do about any of this beyond continuing to be
> careful and trust in all the numerous employees and volunteer of the WMF
> (most of whom are outside the US) to start yelling very loudly if
> something fishy is going on.  So let's store the tinfoil hats and get
> back to work, please?
>

Tinfoil hats?  These secret subpoenas have been demonstrated to be real.
Very few of the employees (and probably none of the volunteers), none of
whom are outside the US, would know about them, and those few would be
criminally bound to keep quiet about them.

This isn't conspiracy theory.  This isn't paranoia.  It's demonstrated
reality.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Andy Mabbett wrote:

> > PRISM
>
> From @ShammaBoyarin on Twitter: "Its not as if the NSA were mass
> downloading articles from JSTOR."


Certainly if the evidence showed that the NSA were breaking into wiring
closets and hacking into computer networks this would be a much different
story.

(Yes, you can speculate that they're probably doing this too, but this
particular scandal is the NSA getting information from computer networks
with the permission of the computer owners, not despite the owners actively
trying to keep them out.)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> > (Yes, you can speculate that they're probably doing this too, but this
> > particular scandal is the NSA getting information from computer networks
> > with the permission of the computer owners, not despite the owners
> > actively
> > trying to keep them out.)
>
> Actually, there is a small attached CIA unit to do just that. The story
> is a bit bigger than what The Guardian has published so far.


Did you read what I said?  Yes, you can speculate that that's what they're
doing.  But that's not what was published.

The fact of the matter is that there would be a much bigger uproar if the
NSA were caught doing what Aaron Swartz did, on American soil against an
innocent American company.  If NSA were caught breaking into wiring closets
and hacking into computer networks, the 4th Amendment violation would be
way more obvious and incontrovertible.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 1:56 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> > The fact of the matter is that there would be a much bigger uproar if the
> > NSA were caught doing what Aaron Swartz did, on American soil against an
> > innocent American company.  If NSA were caught breaking into wiring
> > closets
> > and hacking into computer networks, the 4th Amendment violation would be
> > way more obvious and incontrovertible.
> >
>
> Within the United States the FBI, has the authority, in appropriate
> cases, with a warrant, to engage in such activity.


That they can do it with a warrant is why I said an *innocent* American
company.  I'm quite aware of the existence of sneak-and-peak warrants.  If
these are being issued to hack into the networks of Google and Yahoo and
all, without any evidence that Google and Yahoo and all were breaking the
law, then I think evidence of this would cause a huge uproar, and that the
practice would be found to be in violation of the 4th Amendment.


> If there was a valid
> finding by a Federal District Court judge that the was a valid reason it
> would not be a 4th amendment violation.


By definition, if the warrant is valid, then the 4th Amendment is not
violated, because a warrant which violates the 4th Amendment is not a valid
one.

But that's nothing more than hand waving.  A warrant allowing the
government to break into an MIT wiring closet and from there hack into the
JSTOR network (spoofing IP and MAC addresses in order to get around
blocks), without any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of MIT or JSTOR,
would not be valid.

Maybe by "valid" you meant procedurally valid, and not substantively valid?
 If so, you're just wrong.

For those not familiar with the case against Aaron Swartz, who might be
under the mistaken impression that all he did was download a bunch of
public domain resources, Orin Kerr has a good summary at
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ where he concludes
"the charges against Swartz were based on a fair reading of the law".

There is more than one source,
> not just what happens to be on the front page this week. Additionally, we
> are not bound by the canon of generally accepted knowledge in our
> discussions. That is our rule for encyclopedia articles, not our rules
> for thinking.


I'm not sure whose rules for thinking you're talking about.  Personally I
have a rule against believing things without evidence.  In some cases
that's more lenient than Wikipedia's sourcing rules (original research is
great), and in some cases it's more strict (I don't believe everything I
read in the mainstream news).
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this was
> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
>

Key word there being "knowingly".
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Anthony]

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 12:44 AM, Tim Starling wrote:

> On 01/08/13 14:15, Anthony wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Ryan Lane  wrote:
> >
> >> I would be fired and jailed before I knowingly let that occur. If this
> was
> >> the case I'd very surely not be working for Wikimedia Foundation.
> >>
> >
> > Key word there being "knowingly".
>
> I don't know why the NSA would sneak around in our data centres
> mirroring our ethernet ports if they already have almost all of our
> access logs by capturing unencrypted traffic as it passes through
> XKeyscore nodes.
>

Especially not when they can get someone else to do it for them.

I think you should save the conspiracy theories until after we switch
> anons to HTTPS, that's when they will have an incentive.
>

And I thought Ryan Lane was talking about the future, not the past.  I
certainly was.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 1:32 PM, James Salsman  wrote:

> George William Herbert wrote:
> >...
> > It would also not be much more effort or customer impact
> > to pad to the next larger 1k size for a random large fraction
> > of transmissions.
>
> Padding each transmission with a random number of bytes, up to say 50
> or 100, might provide a greater defense against fingerprinting while
> saving massive amounts of bandwidth.
>

Or it might provide virtually no defense and not save any bandwidth.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

How much padding is already inherent in HTTPS?  Does the protocol pad to
the size of the blocks in the block cipher?

Seems to me that any amount of padding is going to give little bang for the
buck, at least without using some sort of pipelining.  You could probably
do quite a bit if you redesigned Mediawiki from scratch using all those
newfangled asynchronous javascript techniques, but that's not exactly an
easy task.  :)


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 3:45 PM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:

> On 08/02/2013 01:32 PM, James Salsman wrote:
> > Padding each transmission with a random number of bytes, up to say 50
> > or 100, might provide a greater defense against fingerprinting while
> > saving massive amounts of bandwidth.
>
> It would slightly change the algorithm used to make the fingerprint, not
> make it any significantly higher, and you'd want to have some fuzz in
> the match process anyways since you wouldn't necessarily want to have to
> fiddle with your database at every edit.
>
> The combination of "at least this size" with "at least that many
> secondary documents of at least those sizes in that order" is probably
> sufficient to narrow the match to a very tiny minority of articles.
> You'd also need to randomize delays, shuffle load order, load blinds,
> etc.  A minor random increase of size in document wouldn't even slow
> down the process.
>
> -- Marc
>
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

> Anthony wrote:
> >
> > How much padding is already inherent in HTTPS?
>
> None, which is why Ryan's Google Maps fingerprinting example works.
>

Citation needed.


> >... Seems to me that any amount of padding is going to give little
> > bang for the buck
>
> Again, can we please procure expert opinions instead of relying on the
> existing pool of volunteer and staff opinions, especially when there
> is so much FUD prevalent discouraging the kinds of encryption which
> would most likely strengthen privacy?


Feel free.  But don't talk about what is most likely if you're not
interested in being told that you're wrong.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 10:07 PM, Anthony  wrote:

>
> Anthony wrote:
>> >
>> > How much padding is already inherent in HTTPS?
>>
>> None, which is why Ryan's Google Maps fingerprinting example works.
>>
>
> Citation needed.
>

Also please address
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_modes_of_operation#Padding

It seems that the ciphers which run in CBC mode, at least, are padded.
 Wikipedia currently seems to be set to use RC4 128.  I'm not sure what, if
any, padding is used by that cipher.  But presumably Wikipedia will switch
to a better cipher if Wikimedia cares about security.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

Google also seems to be using RC4 128, so that explains why there's no
padding by default there.

RC4 is a stream cipher.  The more secure ciphers are (all?) block ciphers.

"A block cipher  works on units
of a fixed size
 (known
as a *block size*), but messages come in a variety of lengths. So some
modes (namely 
ECB
 and CBC ) require
that the final block be padded before encryption."


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 10:42 PM, James Salsman  wrote:

> > please address
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_modes_of_operation#Padding
>
> Sure. As soon as someone creates
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Shimmerso I can use an appropriate
> example.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 11:09 PM, James Salsman  wrote:

> Anthony, padding in this context means adding null or random bytes to the
> end of encrypted TCP streams in order to obscure their true length. The
> process of adding padding is entirely independent of the choice of
> underlying cipher.
>

My point is that if the stream is encrypted using a block cipher (at least,
in CBC mode), then it's already padded to the block size of the cipher.

That's the more complete answer to my question of "How much padding is
already inherent in HTTPS?"  HTTPS itself does not have any inherent
padding, but when used with certain block ciphers, it does.

By the way, for most hours it's around 2.1-2.3 million, not 4.3 million.
 Wikimedia has been kind enough to give us a list of which pages are viewed
each hour of the day, along with the size of each page:
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-raw/

In this case, however, we have been discussing perfect forward secrecy,
> which is dependent on the particular cypher. ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA is an
> example of a PFS cipher and TLS key exchange protocol choice widely
> supported by Apache supporting PFS.
>

PFS is the method of key exchange.  You can use it with various different
ciphers.  From what I'm reading it can be used with AES and CBC, which
would be a block cipher which pads to 128 or 256 bytes.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Anthony  wrote:

> AES and CBC, which would be a block cipher which pads to 128 or 256 bytes.
>

I mean bits, of course.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

[Anthony]

On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 4:19 AM, Ryan Lane  wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 7:23 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> > It seems that the ciphers which run in CBC mode, at least, are padded.
> >  Wikipedia currently seems to be set to use RC4 128.  I'm not sure what,
> if
> > any, padding is used by that cipher.  But presumably Wikipedia will
> switch
> > to a better cipher if Wikimedia cares about security.
> >
>
> We're currently have RC4 and AES ciphers in our list, but have RC4 listed
> first and have a server preference list to combat BEAST. TLS 1.1/1.2 are
> enabled and I'll be adding the GCM ciphers to the beginning of the list
> either during Wikimania or as soon as I get back.
>

Rereading that it looks like I might have implied that Wikimedia didn't
care about security.  That was absolutely not my intended implication.
 Sorry about that.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:13 AM, John  wrote:
> that two week estimate was given worst case scenario. Given the best case
> we are talking as little as a few hours for the smaller wikis to 5 days or
> so for a project the size of enwiki. (see
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/xmldatadumps-l/2012-May/000491.htmlfor
> progress on image dumps`)

Where are you getting these figures from?

Are you talking about a full history copy?

Also, what about the copyright issues (especially, attribution)?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:18 AM, John  wrote:
> take a look at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Importing_XML_dumps for
> exactly how to import an existing dump, I know the process of re-importing
> a cluster for the toolserver is normally just a few days when they have the
> needed dumps.

Toolserver doesn't have full history, does it?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:30 AM, John  wrote:
> Ill run a quick benchmark and import the full history of simple.wikipedia to
> my laptop wiki on a stick, and give an exact duration

Simple.wikipedia is nothing like en.wikipedia.  For one thing, there's
no need to turn on $wgCompressRevisions with simple.wikipedia.

Is $wgCompressRevisions still used?  I haven't followed this in quite a while.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 12:45 AM, John  wrote:
> Simple.wikipedia is nothing like en.wikipedia I care to dispute that
> statement, All WMF wikis are setup basically the same (an odd extension here
> or there is different, and different namespace names at times) but for the
> purpose of recovery simplewiki_p is a very standard example. this issue isnt
> just about enwiki_p but *all* wmf wikis. Doing a data recovery for enwiki vs
> simplewiki is just a matter of time, for enwiki a 5 day estimate would be
> fairly standard (depending on server setup) and lower times for smaller
> databases. typically you can explain it in a rate of X revisions processed
> per Y time unit, regardless of the project. and that rate should be similar
> for everything given the same hardware setup.

Are you compressing old revisions, or not?  Does the WMF database
compress old revisions, or not?

In any case, I'm sorry, a 20 gig mysql database does not scale
linearly to a 20 terabyte mysql database.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:22 AM, John  wrote:
> Anthony the process is linear, you have a php inserting X number of rows per
> Y time frame.

Amazing.  I need to switch all my databases to MySQL.  It can insert X
rows per Y time frame, regardless of whether the database is 20
gigabytes or 20 terabytes in size, regardless of whether the average
row is 3K or 1.5K, regardless of whether I'm using a thumb drive or a
RAID array or a cluster of servers, etc.

> Yes rebuilding the externallinks, links, and langlinks tables
> will take some additional time and wont scale.

And this is part of the process too, right?

> However I have been working
> with the toolserver since 2007 and Ive lost count of the number of times
> that the TS has needed to re-import a cluster, (s1-s7) and even enwiki can
> be done in a semi-reasonable timeframe.

Re-importing how?  From the compressed XML full history dumps?

> The WMF actually compresses all text
> blobs not just old versions.

Is http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Text_table still accurate?  Is
WMF using gzip or object?

> complete download and decompression of simple
> only took 20 minutes on my 2 year old consumer grade laptop with a standard
> home cable internet connection, same download on the toolserver (minus
> decompression) was 88s. Yeah Importing will take a little longer but
> shouldnt be that big of a deal.

For the full history English Wikipedia it *is* a big deal.

If you think it isn't, stop playing with simple.wikipedia, and tell us
how long it takes to get a mirror up and running of en.wikipedia.

Do you plan to run compressOld.php?  Are you going to import
everything in plain text first, and *then* start compressing?  Seems
like an awful lot of wasted hard drive space.

> There will also be some need cleanup tasks.
> However the main issue, archiving and restoring wmf wikis isnt an issue, and
> with moderately recent hardware is no big deal. Im putting my money where my
> mouth is, and getting actual valid stats and figures. Yes it may not be an
> exactly 1:1 ratio when scaling up, however given the basics of how importing
> a dump functions it should remain close to the same ratio

If you want to put your money where your mouth is, import
en.wikipedia.  It'll only take 5 days, right?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:06 AM, John  wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:52 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:22 AM, John  wrote:
>> > Anthony the process is linear, you have a php inserting X number of rows
>> > per
>> > Y time frame.
>>
>> Amazing.  I need to switch all my databases to MySQL.  It can insert X
>> rows per Y time frame, regardless of whether the database is 20
>> gigabytes or 20 terabytes in size, regardless of whether the average
>> row is 3K or 1.5K, regardless of whether I'm using a thumb drive or a
>> RAID array or a cluster of servers, etc.
>
> When refering to X over Y time, its an average of a of say 1000 revisions
> per 1 minute, any X over Y period must be considered with averages in mind,
> or getting a count wouldnt be possible.

The *average* en.wikipedia revision is more than twice the size of the
*average* simple.wikipedia revision.  The *average* performance of a
20 gig database is faster than the *average* performance of a 20
terabyte database.  The *average* performance of your laptop's thumb
drive is different from the *average* performance of a(n array of)
drive(s) which can handle 20 terabytes of data.

> If you setup your sever/hardware correctly it will compress the text
> information during insertion into the database

Is this how you set up your simple.wikipedia test?  How long does it
take import the data if you're using the same compression mechanism as
WMF (which, you didn't answer, but I assume is concatenation and
compression).  How exactly does this work "during insertion" anyway?
Does it intelligently group sets of revisions together to avoid
decompressing and recompressing the same revision several times?  I
suppose it's possible, but that would introduce quite a lot of
complication into the import script, slowing things down dramatically.

What about the answers to my other questions?

>> If you want to put your money where your mouth is, import
>> en.wikipedia.  It'll only take 5 days, right?
>
> If I actually had a server or the disc space to do it I would, just to prove
> your smartass comments as stupid as they actually are. However given my
> current resource limitations (fairly crappy internet connection, older
> laptops, and lack of HDD) I tried to select something that could give
> reliable benchmarks. If your willing to foot the bill for the new hardware
> Ill gladly prove my point

What you seem to be saying is that you're *not* putting your money
where your mouth is.

Anyway, if you want, I'll make a deal with you.  A neutral third party
rents the hardware at Amazon Web Services (AWS).  We import
simple.wikipedia full history (concatenating and compressing during
import).  We take the ratio of revisions in simple.wikipedia to the
ratio of revisions in en.wikipedia.  We import en.wikipedia full
history (concatenating and compressing during import).  If the ratio
of time it takes to import en.wikipedia vs simple.wikipedia is greater
than or equal to twice the ratio of revisions, then you reimburse the
third party.  If the ratio of import time is less than twice the ratio
of revisions (you claim it is linear, therefore it'll be the same
ratio), then I reimburse the third party.

Either way, we save the new dump, with the processing already done,
and send it to archive.org (and WMF if they're willing to host it).
So we actually get a useful result out of this.  It's not just for the
purpose of settling an argument.

Either of us can concede defeat at any point, and stop the experiment.
 At that point if the neutral third party wishes to pay to continue
the job, s/he would be responsible for the additional costs.

Shouldn't be too expensive.  If you concede defeat after 5 days, then
your CPU-time costs are $54 (assuming Extra Large High Memory
Instance).  Including 4 terabytes of EBS (which should be enough if
you compress on the fly) for 5 days should be less than $100.

I'm tempted to do it even if you don't take the bet.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 7:27 AM, J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov
 wrote:
> I'd like to point out that the increasingly technical nature of this
> conversation probably belongs either on wikitech-l, or off-list, and that
> the strident nature of the comments is fast approaching inappropriate.

Really?  I think we're really getting somewhere.

In fact, I think someone at WMF should contact Amazon and see if
they'll let us conduct the experiment for free, in exchange for us
creating the dump for them to host as a public data set
(http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/).

In case you got lost in the technical details, the original post was
asking "Has anyone recently set up a full-external-duplicate of (for
instance) en.wp?" and suggesting that we should do this on a yearly
basis as a fire drill.

My latest post was a concrete proposal for doing exactly that.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

Please have someone at WMF coordinate this so that there aren't
multiple requests made.  In my opinion, it should preferably be made
by a WMF employee.

Fill out the form at
https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/aws-dataset-inquiry

Tell them you want to create a public data set which is a snapshot of
the English Wikipedia.  We can coordinate any questions, and any
implementation details, on a separate list.

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 7:43 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 7:27 AM, J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov
>  wrote:
>> I'd like to point out that the increasingly technical nature of this
>> conversation probably belongs either on wikitech-l, or off-list, and that
>> the strident nature of the comments is fast approaching inappropriate.
>
> Really?  I think we're really getting somewhere.
>
> In fact, I think someone at WMF should contact Amazon and see if
> they'll let us conduct the experiment for free, in exchange for us
> creating the dump for them to host as a public data set
> (http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/).
>
> In case you got lost in the technical details, the original post was
> asking "Has anyone recently set up a full-external-duplicate of (for
> instance) en.wp?" and suggesting that we should do this on a yearly
> basis as a fire drill.
>
> My latest post was a concrete proposal for doing exactly that.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fire Drill Re: Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 17 May 2012 12:43, Anthony  wrote:
>> In fact, I think someone at WMF should contact Amazon and see if
>> they'll let us conduct the experiment for free, in exchange for us
>> creating the dump for them to host as a public data set
>> (http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/).
>
> What dump are you going to create? You are starting from a dump, why
> can't Amazon just host that?

Because the XML dump is semi-useless - it's compressed in all the
wrong places to use for an actual running system.

Anyway, looking at how the AWS Public Data Sets work, it probably
would be best not to even create a dump, but just put up the running
(object compressed) database.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 8:22 AM, emijrp  wrote:
> They are XML dumps. Why did you say they are semi-useless?

Because they are XML dumps, mainly.  The data in the WMF database is
compressed in a format which can be easily randomly accessed.  The
dump procedure is to uncompress it, convert it to XML. and then
recompress it, in a format which can't be easily randomly accessed.
The import procedure is to uncompress the "dump", convert it from XML,
and then recompress it in a format which is easily randomly accessed.

There are some hacks to get around this with the bz2 version of the
"dump", but this is far less efficient than the format which the data
already is in before the "dump" process takes place.

> I'm not sure if all the MediaWiki revision table parameters are available in
> the XML dumps, but most of them are.

The main problem is that they are compressed in a format which is
terrible for actual use.  The missing information (mostly, indexes),
is a secondary problem, however.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:
> We could also consider the possibility of allowing users to use OpenID or 
> OAuth or whatever the web identity mechanism du jour is to allow loose 
> affiliation of usernames between MediaWiki installs. That way you can 
> establish the link between identities across wikis (of course, if you don't 
> want to, you don't have to).

Also, there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:User_committed_identity

But most people don't seem to care about these things.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia sites not easy to archive (Was Re: Knol is closing tomorrow )

[Anthony]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 17 May 2012 13:32, Anthony  wrote:
>> Because they are XML dumps, mainly.  The data in the WMF database is
>> compressed in a format which can be easily randomly accessed.
>
> It's a dump.

Not really.  Yes, it's called that.  And historically, it was that,
but the XML "dumps" aren't really dumps at all.

> It's not supposed to be randomly accessed. We're talking
> about archives, not mirrors.

That's why I said they're semi-useless (i.e. half-useless), not useless.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

The difference is that Wikipedia is usable in the real world, whereas
OSM, for the most part, is not.

Yes, TomTom is dying.  But it's because of Google, not because of OSM.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 7:28 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> TomTom press release:
> http://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/licensing/newsletter/201205/didyouknow/
>
> OpenStreetMap volunteer response:
> http://www.systemed.net/blog/index.php?post=23 Flags TomTom
> quote-mining.
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 8:27 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 29 May 2012 13:08, Anthony  wrote:
>
>> The difference is that Wikipedia is usable in the real world, whereas
>> OSM, for the most part, is not.
>> Yes, TomTom is dying.  But it's because of Google, not because of OSM.
>
>
> I'd actually flag smartphones as the culprit. They're the good-enough
> cheap alternative that's disrupting the satnav business. TomTom's
> article is actually about an Android app that uses OSM data.

Well, yeah.  Smartphones were what allowed Google to create its free
satnav app.  And it's hard to compete with free.

And yeah, there are apps that use OSM data.  And there will probably
be more now that OSM has abandoned copyleft for data.  But most of
them won't be free, let alone libre, so it's hard to consider them
part of OSM.  If there's a usable free satnav app based on OSM data,
I'd certainly like to see it.

> Heck, my Blackberry doesn't have a GPS, but I can navigate usably with
> the Vodafone app that just triangulates off the cell towers.
> Resolution is terrible (on the order of 100-200 metres), but it turns
> out to be mostly sufficient.

I guess we have a different notion of "usable" :).

And yes, I'm talking about for driving navigation, which is TomTom's
main market.  Although, while OSM shines in some places in terms of
walking navigation, it is woefully inadequate in others.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Richard Symonds
 wrote:
> Tom: Is there a way to find out where OSM isn't very accurate/complete?

Sure, but they all require comparison to something (a data source,
memory, the real world) which is accurate/complete.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Strainu  wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Anthony :
>> The difference is that Wikipedia is usable in the real world, whereas
>> OSM, for the most part, is not.
>
> I see it the other way around: OSM, for the most part, IS usable in
> the real world. One can easily navigate using OSM data on the main
> roads in a country, and even on major boulevards within the cities.
> The problems appear "in the last kilometer".

I just tried osmand.  I can't even figure out how to put in an
address.  I then tried navfree usa.  I eventually put in an address
(why I can't just type in, or better yet speak, the address, i don't
know).  But the route it gave me included tolls.  When I told it to
avoid tolls, it failed to do so.  (Either the app is broken, or the
information about what roads have tolls is broken.)

There's probably some other app I just don't know about.  But so far I
find it impossible to use OSM data to get the route that I follow
every day to work (which Google's navigation app finds readily, and
even updates on the fly due to changing traffic conditions).

> 2012/5/29 Anthony :
>> And yeah, there are apps that use OSM data.  And there will probably
>> be more now that OSM has abandoned copyleft for data.
>
> Why do you say that? ODbL is still a copyleft license, although a much
> weaker copyleft.

Rather than nitpick over details, I'll go with "much weaker copyleft".

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:29 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>  I then tried navfree usa.

Looking more closely at the directions it did give me, it is having me
get off the toll highway at basically every exit and then getting back
on it.  And the destination is off by 13 blocks (about a mile).

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:43 AM, Strainu  wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Anthony :
>> I just tried osmand.  I can't even figure out how to put in an
>> address.  I then tried navfree usa.
>
> You're limiting yourself to Android, which isn't very fair. Try to get
> hold of a Garmin device with OSM maps and see if that makes a
> difference. I suspect it will. (Garmin also has some GPS apps for
> iPhone, but not for Android. I have no idea if you can load OSM maps
> on those apps)

I'm not doubting that someone can take OSM data and make it into
something usable.  I'm not even doubting that someone *has* taken OSM
data and made it into something usable.

But I think the analogy between being able to take OSM data, probably
add a lot of your own data (espectially for the geolocation
information, which is fantastic in some locations, and horrible in
others), and being able to go to en.wikipedia.org and just use it, is
a very weak analogy.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Strainu  wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Anthony :
>> I'm not doubting that someone can take OSM data and make it into
>> something usable.  I'm not even doubting that someone *has* taken OSM
>> data and made it into something usable.
>
> You obviously have already made up you mind, so I doubt anything I'll
> say will change that, but...

It's not so much what you say.  Possibly you, or someone else, can
point me to a free OSM-based android app which I can use in my daily
driving.  If so, I will change my opinion.

If you're going to refer me to commercial products which were based
(in part) on OSM data, then that's not what I was talking about.

And if you're going to point to the places where OSM beats the
commercial products, that was already acknowledged in the very tomtom
article we're talking about:

"Open source mapping certainly has its benefits and can be extremely
useful, particularly for pedestrians and in city or town centres. The
way that the maps incorporate input from a wide community of
contributors can result in impressive international coverage, whilst
also driving down costs of production. However, when it comes to
automotive-grade mapping, open source has some quite serious
limitations, falling short on the levels of accuracy and reliability
required for safe navigation."

> ...if you wanna go this way, I wonder if you "go to en.wikipedia.org
> and just use it" if you want to plant tomatoes in your garden. I know
> I wouldn't.

I wouldn't use Britannica either.  The context of the article is GPS
navigation for automobiles.

One thing I do have to admit is that my experience with OSM has mostly
been in the United States, which I hear is a place that OSM has been
especially poor, and a place where Google (which is what I do use) is
especially good.

And I don't foresee OSM ever being able to catch up.  Google is very
much a moving target.  While OSM is working on catching up on
geolocation (address to lat/lon) information, Google is micromapping
to the level of detail needed to program a self-driving auto.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:
> On 29 May 2012 15:28, Anthony  wrote:
>> And I don't foresee OSM ever being able to catch up.  Google is very
>> much a moving target.  While OSM is working on catching up on
>> geolocation (address to lat/lon) information, Google is micromapping
>> to the level of detail needed to program a self-driving auto.
>>
>
> OpenStreetMap is working on whatever the contributors want. ;-)

Whereas Google is working on whatever the users want.  :-)

That said, even this is somewhat problematic.  There is somewhat of a
tension in OSM between micromappers and non-micromappers.  Not quite
as bad as in Wikipedia between "inclusionists" and "deletionists" -
for the most part OSM mappers aren't going to outright delete
additional information.  But there have been disputes over, for
example, whether or not it is okay to include short turning lanes in
the lane count.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Strainu  wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Anthony :
>>> ...if you wanna go this way, I wonder if you "go to en.wikipedia.org
>>> and just use it" if you want to plant tomatoes in your garden. I know
>>> I wouldn't.
>>
>> I wouldn't use Britannica either.  The context of the article is GPS
>> navigation for automobiles.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't quite get it. When you said that Wikipedia was
> usable in the real world, I assumed you meant that you can use
> Wikipedia as an encyclopedia for reference in different aspects of
> daily life. Now you're saying that you can somehow use Wikipedia for
> GPS navigation for automobiles?

Nope.  I am challenging the following assertion (put in SAT jargon):
OSM:tomtom::Wikipedia:Britannica (that is, "OSM is to tomtom as
Wikipedia is to Britannica).

In the case of Wikipedia:Britannica, they are compared based on their
usefulness as encyclopedia articles, not on their usefulness as how-to
books.

In the case of OSM:tomtom, in the context of the tomtom article, they
are being compared based on the their usefulness for GPS navigation
for automobiles.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 7:27 PM, John Du Hart  wrote:
> What personal information do you think is contained in an IPv6 address?

Don't they sometimes contain MAC address information?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:06 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> * IPv6 adoption is still below 1% globally [1].
> * It's likely that we'll encounter network-level issues well before we
> hit application-level issues during limited production testing.
> * In the event that we manage to resolve all issues, it's likely that
> we'll only see very limited use/abuse of IPv6 addresses and that we'll
> have plenty of time to adjust procedures and documentation.

I find it interesting that privacy is the main objection that has come
up, because the problem with IPv6 from the POV of WMF is the ready
availability of anonymizing proxies.

My own prediction is that, within a short period of time, 99.% of
edits done through IPv6 will be abuse.  I'd say immediately, but 5
days may be a bit too short for hoards of people to figure out how to
chain an IPv6 proxy and TOR.

> * We can abort this fairly easily, or as Tim suggests, employ global
> blocks of IPv6 addresses to manage abuse.

Make sure to practice doing this.  It's only a matter of time.

Maybe putting a limit on the number of IPv6 edits that can be made per
minute would be a good idea too.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> My own prediction is that, within a short period of time, 99.% of
> edits done through IPv6 will be abuse.  I'd say immediately, but 5
> days may be a bit too short for hoards of people to figure out how to
> chain an IPv6 proxy and TOR.

Lest someone suggest that the solution to this is to block the IPv6
proxy.  The problem is that most of the legitimate traffic using IPv6
also will be using a proxy/tunnel.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 2 June 2012 13:44, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 7:27 PM, John Du Hart  wrote:
>>> What personal information do you think is contained in an IPv6 address?
>>
>> Don't they sometimes contain MAC address information?
>
> I don't know, but I wouldn't consider my MAC address to be personal
> information... you might be able to work out what brand of computer
> I'm using, but I can live with that.

I'm not sure what you're defining personal information as, then.

Is your vehicle's VIN personal information?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 9:59 AM, Leslie Carr  wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Thomas Dalton  
>> wrote:
>>> On 2 June 2012 13:44, Anthony  wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 7:27 PM, John Du Hart  wrote:
>>>>> What personal information do you think is contained in an IPv6 address?
>>>>
>>>> Don't they sometimes contain MAC address information?
>>>
>>> I don't know, but I wouldn't consider my MAC address to be personal
>>> information... you might be able to work out what brand of computer
>>> I'm using, but I can live with that.
>
> I think that having a problem with the implementation of IPv6 is about
> 10 years too late now ;)

The problem isn't with IPv6.  The problem is with the way WMF uses IP addresses.

Of course, it's about 10 years too late for that too.  :)

> If someone cares about their mac address information, they can use
> privacy extensions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv6#Privacy .

I agree.  Though it would probably be a good idea to warn people about
the problem, before publishing their address for the world to see.  A
sentence or two added to the IP address warning which already appears
would probably put things on par with IPv4 addresses.

Personally II think WMF is far too loose about IP addresses in the
first place.  But as I said above, it's about 10 years too late for
that.

---

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-122/sp800-122.pdf

Page 2-2

"The following list contains examples of information that may be
considered PII."

"Asset information, such as Internet Protocol (IP) or Media Access
Control (MAC) address or other host-specific persistent static
identifier that consistently links to a particular person or small,
well-defined group of people"

"Information identifying personally owned property, such as vehicle
registration number or title
number and related information"

Granted, it only says "may be considered" PII.  Certainly seems
definitive to me, though.

And note, of course, that IPv4 addresses also may be considered PII.
IPv6 addresses are just sometimes more likely to be
persistent/static/consistent, and often link to a smaller, more
well-defined group of people.  But then, see above, as IPv6 addresses
sometimes are more anonymous than IPv4 addresses.  It all depends on
the implementation.

Anyway, I do think MAC addresses are certainly (in the vast majority
of cases), PII.  That IPv6 addresses are often PII.  And that IPv4
addresses are often PII.  I don't think IPv6 addresses are
particularly more likely to be PII than IPv4 addresses.  So,
basically, I think the privacy concern specifically about IPv6 is
mostly misplaced.  But it would be nice to readdress the privacy
concerns over IP addresses in general.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Larry Sanger rides again

[Anthony]

> Does anyone know does he have some new project which needs promotion
> in media?

http://www.prlog.org/11887092-announcing-new-wikipedia-criticism-site.html

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TomTom does a Britannica

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:
> The more you play with OpenStreetMap, the more magical ways you start
> discovering that you can use the data. Two that I've recently found...
>
> 1. Water fountains. Here in London, we used to have lots of water
> fountains. Then modern capitalism found a much better way of
> delivering water to people: put it in plastic bottles, drive it half
> way around the country (or world) and sell it to people and a massive
> profit, who then drink it and throw the plastic bottle away.  There
> are a few water fountains in London though, and they are listed on
> OpenStreetMap. Any movement to campaign for change requires actual
> data to start with.

This only works if you verify that all the water fountains in London
are in OSM (which is pretty much tantamount to mapping them yourself).

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] speedydeletion.wika.com lauched

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Tarc Meridian  wrote:
>
> This  has been tried before, i.e. wikialpha.org.  Pages are speedily deleted 
> for a reason, many of them quite properly so.  Moving potentially libelous 
> BLP attack pages and other sundry junk to a publicly viewable wiki is not a 
> very well-thought-out idea.

Every new article is potentially libelous.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on IPv6

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> I noticed that my current IPv6 address appears to be assigned
> dynamically by XS4ALL. I can probably get static if I choose it. But the
> dynamic assignment option does alleviate some people's privacy
> concerns, right?

One particular concern, which isn't really much different from IPv4.

And in something like 90% of browser configurations, you're already
giving out a semi-static unique string with every request anyway.
(see https://panopticlick.eff.org/)

The bigger concern for WMF is the possibility for increased privacy.

> ps. We all know that everyone needs to switch to IPv6 eventually.

Unless IPv7 or IPv8 comes out first.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Pro-active user privacy (Was: Update on IPv6)

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 2:22 PM, James Forrester  wrote:
> There are lots of things we could do - for instance, blocking all
> edits except by logged-in editors would solve this (but is profoundly
> against our general operating principles)

It's really not, considering how incredibly easy it is to create an account.

Especially not if it is made even easier to create an account.
Autogenerate a username and the only difference between "creating an
account" and "editing while not logged in" is having to type in a
password.

> Can I suggest that we try to discuss this on-wiki (as it's more
> inclusive of the community)?

You just did.

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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [cc-community] CC 4.0 and the GNU GPL

[Anthony]

Forwarding this from the CC-licenses list.  The WMF should explore
what impact, if any, one-way CC-BY-SA to GPL compatibility would have
on WMF projects.  Is anyone at the WMF talking to CC/FSF about this?

-- Forwarded message --
From: Christopher Allan Webber 
Date: Thu, May 31, 2012 at 4:51 PM
Subject: [cc-community] CC 4.0 and the GNU GPL
To: cc-commun...@lists.ibiblio.org


Hi all... to revive a thread that's been quiet publicly (but not
privately) for some time:

Brett Smith  writes:
>> How receptive generally might be the FSF to working on GPL
>> compatibility?  (Is the case made for compatibility rationale
>> compelling enough?)
>
> Very receptive.  Some of the toughest questions I deal with in my job
> pertain to license interactions in cases like you describe, where a
> piece of software is under the GPL and associated materials under
> another, often CC BY or CC BY-SA.  Being able to simplify the answers to
> those questions would be very worthwhile.

There haven't been any updates on this in a while, but I wanted to
inform that there is work being done to try and move this forward.
Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation (with the assistance
of the Software Freedom Law Center as counsel) are working together
and are doing our best to explore this as a serious possibility.

As license stewards of CC licenses and the GNU GPL respectively, we wanted
to make clear that both Creative Commons and the Free Software
Foundation think this is an important issue and worth persuing.  Both
of our organiztions agree that license interoperability, especially
amongst copyleft licenses, is an important goal.

At the moment, the general plan is to try to explore both CC BY and CC
BY-SA one-way compatibility with the GNU GPL, aiming for direct
compatibility of terms (think Apache 2.0 and GNU GPL compatibility) with
CC BY, and compatibility between CC BY-SA and the GNU GPL via optional
relicensing (think MPL 2.0 and GNU GPL compatibility).  We are still
exploring possibilities, however.

Thanks for your interest, we will try to keep this conversation
updated as we move along.
 - Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Tom Morris  wrote:
> On Friday, 15 June 2012 at 13:21, David Gerard wrote:
>> I don't recall seeing any, but did anyone actually explain why the
>> market had not provided a filtering solution for Wikipedia, if there's
>> actually a demand for one?
>
> Market failures do sometimes exist.
>
> Also, because as far as I can tell, the proposed filter isn't a NetNanny type 
> thing, it's a "I don't want to see pictures of boobies" AdBlock type thing. 
> Which is a different thing entirely.
>
> Of course, there's some confusion here. Larry Sanger, for instance, is very 
> very angry about how Wikipedia hasn't implemented a "filter", even though he 
> seems slightly confused as to the difference between an AdBlock type filter 
> and a NetNanny type filter.
>
> Preventing people who don't want to see pictures of naked people from seeing 
> pictures of naked people is a lot easier a task than preventing people who DO 
> want to see pictures of naked people from doing so.

Preventing, sure.  But I think what you see as Sanger being confused
about the difference between an AdBlock type filter and a NetNanny
type filter is actually his desire for something which isn't either -
a filter which parents can set up to prevent their children from
inadvertently stumbling upon age-inappropriate materials.

As a parent I must say that there is certainly demand for this sort of
thing.  And I can think of many reasons why the market hasn't tackled
this one.  The copyleft license is near, if not at, the top of that
list.  Liability and other legal considerations would also be high up
on the list.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

> I have never seen a "censorware" that works
> flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
> (incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
> producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the parents
> and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
> perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the child,
> stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then Clippy).

What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 17.06.2012 01:21, schrieb Anthony:
>
>>> I have never seen a "censorware" that works
>>> flawlessly (not even china can do this right). Either it allows to much
>>> (incomplete blacklist) or it is unnecessary limited (incomplete whitelist
>>> producing angry mob). Additionally it has to suite the view of the
>>> parents
>>> and match the age of the child. The only "software" which does this
>>> perfectly is the brain of the parents that tracks the actions of the
>>> child,
>>> stops them when necessary and gives useful advice (even better then
>>> Clippy).
>>
>> What parent tracks every action of their child?  You seem to have a
>> very unrealistic picture of how parenting works.
>
> I guess i have to really wrap any comment inside the
>  tag stack to avoid confusion...

I still would have been confused.  Still am, actually.  Did this
paragraph have a serious point at all?  I hope so, because Wikipedia's
porn problem is a serious issue.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 3:11 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
 wrote:
> Anthony, 17/06/2012 05:05:
>
>> I still would have been confused.  Still am, actually.  Did this
>> paragraph have a serious point at all?  I hope so, because Wikipedia's
>> porn problem is a serious issue.
>
> The point was, I think, that no "software" is perfect (not even parents'
> brain) and that parents can't rely on software too much.

Is this supposed to be a parody of the people who point out the flaws
in software solutions but fail to point out the flaws in non-software
solutions?

Because, it seemed to me to be an instance of it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 3:11 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
 wrote:
> Not that hard to
> understand, hence please avoid off-topic (see subject) paternalism.

I still don't understand how calling something "perfect" when you are
making an argument that it is the proper solution to a problem, is
sarcasm/irony.  Sarcasm/irony would be calling something perfect when
you are making an argument that it is not the proper solution.
Exaggerating a point on which you are incorrect is not sarcasm/irony.

In any case, I'm not sure where the paternalism is in my posts.  Yes,
I am giving the perspective of a father, but that is not paternalism.

No software is perfect.  No solution is perfect.  But don't let the
perfect be the enemy of the good.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 9:14 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 17 June 2012 13:21, Anthony  wrote:
>
>> No software is perfect.  No solution is perfect.  But don't let the
>> perfect be the enemy of the good.
>
> You're assuming that a "good" exists for this function. This
> assumption is entirely unsubstantiated.

YouTube's age restricted content policy is "good".  That is to say,
it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than Wikipedia's policies.  My
kids are much more likely to run across hard core pornography while
clicking around on Wikipedia than clicking around on YouTube.
Personally I'd prefer they rely more on whitelisting than on
blacklisting - but what they do is already a *lot* better than
Wikipedia.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 9:30 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 9:14 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 17 June 2012 13:21, Anthony  wrote:
>>
>>> No software is perfect.  No solution is perfect.  But don't let the
>>> perfect be the enemy of the good.
>>
>> You're assuming that a "good" exists for this function. This
>> assumption is entirely unsubstantiated.
>
> YouTube's age restricted content policy is "good".  That is to say,
> it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than Wikipedia's policies.  My
> kids are much more likely to run across hard core pornography while
> clicking around on Wikipedia than clicking around on YouTube.
> Personally I'd prefer they rely more on whitelisting than on
> blacklisting - but what they do is already a *lot* better than
> Wikipedia.

World Book Encyclopedia was "good".  I spent many days reading through
the entries, performing the dead-tree equivalent of clicking on the
links as I went from topic to topic.  My parents didn't sit looking
over my shoulder.  It was an encyclopedia I could read on my own.

You want an explanation for why the market hasn't created a WBE
equivalent based on Wikipedia (*)?  The top answer is copyleft.  (As
suggested by Andrew Gray, technical/legal problems are another
problem, but I think these issues pale in comparison to copyleft.)

(*) Actually I'm not sure the market hasn't created this.  There
certainly have been various projects which have attempted to create
it.  I'm not sure if any have succeeded, and my kids are not yet at
the reading level where I need to spend much time looking for it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 10:48 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> So I think my question - if this is so obviously the
> right thing, then where are the existing attempts? - still stands as
> relevant.

The fact that it is the right thing isn't obvious, and forking of free
content is generally a last resort, when all else has failed.  Those
"recent statements by board members that the filter is alive and well"
make a fork less likely, not more.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> It didn't even need to be complete fork. A whitelist copy would most likely
> already be sufficient for your needs. It would automatically update any
> article on a white list after a quick review (like sighted revision) or even
> entirely automated for articles or images marked as unproblematic. There
> would be some programming work (an "confirm update button"), but overall it
> would be easy to implement and maintain. That way you could easily create a
> Wiki suited for the needs of a special audience which is quickly updated and
> expanded to the latest versions. A subset of Wikipedia.

I don't see how that isn't a fork.  And I don't think it would be easy
to implement or to maintain.  Citizendium tried to do this without
even doing the automatic updating part, and they quickly decided that
it was more trouble than it was worth.

Maybe things have gotten better since then.  Maybe they have gotten
worse.  I don't know.  Is there even a way to export an article,
including (recursively) all the templates it depends on?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 9:44 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 18.06.2012 00:40, schrieb Anthony:
>> Is there even a way to export an article,
>> including (recursively) all the templates it depends on?
>
> Every stupid bot could do this. There is no "running out of the box"
> solution at the moment, but the effort to set up something like this would
> be minimal compared to anything else.

Have you ever tried to do this?  It's not as easy as you are making it
sound, at least it wasn't as of a few years ago, because Mediawiki is
tightly coupled to the specific database structure it uses.

> I would say that Citizendium failed because they did no automatic updating.

Well, I'm not talking about why Citizendium failed, as that became
apparent much later.  I'm talking about why they dropped the
"progressive fork" parts, which happened pretty early on.  The fact of
the matter is that forking Wikipedia and cleaning it up is more
difficult than just starting from scratch using Wikipedia as a
reference (possibly copy/pasting large portions as you go).

> What i have in mind is delayed mirror with update control. It is not meant
> to be edited by hand.

Yes.  This simplifies some things, and it makes other things
impossible (e.g. if you want to remove one line from an article,
you're stuck with removing the entire article; if you want to remove
one link from a template, you're stuck with removing every article
which includes that template, or includes a template which includes
that template, etc.)

And considering the heavy use of templates which are
Wikipedia-specific, presumably you're going to allow for *some*
hand-editing.

> It is a subset of the current content selected by the
> host (one or many users) of the page himself. It is essentially a whitelist
> for Wikipedia that only contains selected/checked content. That way a
> "childrens Wiki" could easily be created, by not including any unwanted
> content, while the effort stays minimal. (Not more effort then to create
> your own book from a list of already written articles)

Right, well, I thought this too, until I tried to do it.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:21 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 18 June 2012 08:00, Tom Morris  wrote:
>
>> {{sofixit}}
>> If all the people in favour of filters had spent their time building them 
>> rather than arguing about them, we would have had a wide array of different 
>> solutions, without any politics or drama.
>
>
> The problem there is the insistence of filter proponents (from board
> down) that it *has* to be done on the sites themselves, with any
> post-site solution being considered unsuitable. Why is not clear to me
> either.

Where do you run the filter?  I suppose a sophisticated parent could
set up a firewall and a proxy on his home network, but many families
don't even have a spare computer to act as the firewall, let alone the
technical know-how to run the thing.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

>> This leads me to the simple conclusion that it isn't worth the effort,
>> especially if the filter is advertised to make Wikipedia a save place for
>> children, while everyone (including children) can disable it at any time.
>
> "Think of the children" is not really an argument I ascribe to. And not
> really one other proponents of the filter, by my observation, ascribe to
> either.
>
> It mostly seems to be brought up by opponents to try and invalidate
> arguments.

No, the goal of making Wikipedia a safe place for children is the
genesis of the filter.  It has since been watered down via design by
committee into some sort of "let's make people double click before
they can see the porn", but there certainly are some who have stuck by
their principles, on both sides of the argument.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 18.06.2012 14:49, schrieb Anthony:
>> Have you ever tried to do this?  It's not as easy as you are making it
>> sound, at least it wasn't as of a few years ago, because Mediawiki is
>> tightly coupled to the specific database structure it uses.
>
> You don't need to interact with the database of Wikipedia itself. You can
> use the MediaWiki API which is quite stable and enough for this task. I
> don't speak about a complete mirror, i speak about a filtered _view_ for
> Wikipedia. You type in "http://www.mysavewiki.com/Banana"; and the server
> delivers the recently approved and cached version of the article from
> Wikipedia if "Banana" is whitelisted.

Are you talking about "remote loading"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Remote_loading)?
 That's a good way to get your IP address banned.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 18.06.2012 14:49, schrieb Anthony:
>> And considering the heavy use of templates which are
>> Wikipedia-specific, presumably you're going to allow for *some*
>> hand-editing.
>
> That would be something else than i had in mind and would extend the
> functionality of the filter (the proposed one) by far. I intended flagged
> revisions together with white listing for a some kind of special audience,
> and not a fork like Wiki that modifies the content (partially) itself.

"This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help
improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)"

Are you going to include that template or not?  If so, where are you
going to link "improve this article" to?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 19.06.2012 01:39, schrieb Anthony:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
>>   wrote:
>>>
>>> Am 18.06.2012 14:49, schrieb Anthony:
>>>>
>>>> Have you ever tried to do this?  It's not as easy as you are making it
>>>> sound, at least it wasn't as of a few years ago, because Mediawiki is
>>>> tightly coupled to the specific database structure it uses.
>>>
>>> You don't need to interact with the database of Wikipedia itself. You can
>>> use the MediaWiki API which is quite stable and enough for this task. I
>>> don't speak about a complete mirror, i speak about a filtered _view_ for
>>> Wikipedia. You type in "http://www.mysavewiki.com/Banana"; and the server
>>> delivers the recently approved and cached version of the article from
>>> Wikipedia if "Banana" is whitelisted.
>>
>> Are you talking about "remote loading"
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Remote_loading)?
>>  That's a good way to get your IP address banned.
>
> No. I don't talk about remote loading. I talk about caching. The server
> hosts the current version itself and only fetches it for an manual update.

Okay, so the server "hosts the current version itself".  Presumably
they are going to use Mediawiki to do this, unless you are suggesting
that they write their own custom wiki parser.  That Mediawiki that
they are running "is tightly coupled to the specific database
structure it uses", at least it was as of a few years ago.  What I
mean by this is that the parser loads from the database as it's
parsing.  It's not 1) load everything you need from the database, and
then 2) parse it.  You have to parse it in order to figure out what to
load, and parsing it means running Mediawiki.  I believe there were
some efforts made to fix this, so maybe it has been fixed.  I haven't
looked at it in years.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> My middle one can very
> briefly go online alone to a few sites I've already agreed to, and I
> check up on her a lot.

Is Wikipedia one of those few sites?

> But the whole point is, that's -my- job, not anyone else's, just like
> it's my job to teach them how to drive, not everyone else's to get the
> hell off the road before they start to. Why are we figuring this to be
> any different?

Well, surely it is different.  If you leave your keys in your car with
the car running, and my ten year old hops in and takes it for a
joyride, you don't think you're partially responsible for what
happens?

> The world isn't always safe for children, and it is the
> job of -parents- to keep children away from areas unsuitable for them,
> and to alert them to the type of things they might encounter, not the
> job of everyone else to make sure the whole earth is covered in safety
> plastic and rubber bumpers.

The question, really, is whether or not Wikipedia (or, at least, a
cordoned off section of Wikipedia) wants to be one of those safe
places.

Personally, all I'm saying is that it would be nice if it did.  Some
others are saying that, if Wikipedia chooses not to be a place which
is safe for children, then Wikipedia shouldn't be marketed to children
- that the fundraisers shouldn't advertise Wikipedia as being a
project which benefits children.  And I think they have a good point.

And actually, I have to nit-pick and say that it isn't *only* my job
and "not anyone else's".  It's also the job of others who have
*chosen* to help me with it.  I think that's an important point,
because the vast majority of us are *not* saying that Wikipedia *has
to* choose to facilitate the creation of an educational resource for
children.  We're saying you *should* choose to do so.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 1:06 AM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>>> My middle one can very
>>> briefly go online alone to a few sites I've already agreed to, and I
>>> check up on her a lot.
>>
>> Is Wikipedia one of those few sites?
>
> Yes, actually, along with several other educational ones, some with
> children's games, her school website, etc. The chances that she would
> randomly stumble across a sexual image on Wikipedia are -vanishingly-
> slim,

Really?  How old are we talking about?

And what do you mean "randomly stumble across"?  I don't think it
would be random.  It would be one link leads to another, leads to
another, leads to another...

Also, how do you deal with the external links?  Do you have any type
of blocking software set up, or does your daughter recognize the
different shades of blue and know that she's not allowed to click on
the blues of a lighter shade without permission?

> and quite realistically, if it were to happen, I would much
> rather it occur in the context of a dispassionate article giving a
> frank but rather dry account of what it means, than a porn site with
> flashing banners and descriptions designed to shock, titillate, etc.

Wikipedia is better than a porn site.  But "better than a porn site"
doesn't mean it's necessarily a place I'd like my child to go to to
learn about a sexual topic.

> Her main interest is in dinosaurs, horses, and veterinary medicine,
> though-not exactly controversial sections of the project.

You've never gotten any of the "tough questions"?  The ones that I
claim, and you don't seem to deny, are not best answered by a
Wikipedia article.

>>> But the whole point is, that's -my- job, not anyone else's, just like
>>> it's my job to teach them how to drive, not everyone else's to get the
>>> hell off the road before they start to. Why are we figuring this to be
>>> any different?
>>
>> Well, surely it is different.  If you leave your keys in your car with
>> the car running, and my ten year old hops in and takes it for a
>> joyride, you don't think you're partially responsible for what
>> happens?
>
> My ten year old kid isn't stupid enough to do that. If yours is, you
> failed long before they got in the driver's seat.

Well, I don't have a ten-year-old kid, let alone one that would hop
into a car and go for a joyride.  But hypothetically speaking, maybe
s/he has a mental disability which is not a failure of mine at all.

> So no, I wouldn't
> particularly feel responsible-if your kid is that immature and prone
> to rash behavior, you shouldn't have let them out of your sight.

Well, first of all, every parent has to, at some point, let their kid
out of their sight (if nothing else, at some point they have to
sleep).  So, the failure is not necessarily that of the parent.  It
could be the failure of the baby-sitter, or the failure of the school
bus driver, or the action of a kidnapper, or any of a number of other
possibilities.

But, in any case, my point is not that the current caregiver of the
child is not at fault.  My point is that the person who left their car
running, unattended, with the doors unlocked, in it is *also* at
fault.

The law would certainly agree with me on this.  I guess you would
disagree with this aspect of law?

>> The question, really, is whether or not Wikipedia (or, at least, a
>> cordoned off section of Wikipedia) wants to be one of those safe
>> places.
>
> And like I said, and have seen with my own kids, the vast majority of
> it is. I would wager that a far higher percentage of Wikipedia is
> "child-safe" than the percentage of the Internet at large.

Well, yes, if you go by word count or article count.  If you go by
number of pageviews, I'm not so sure.  There are large portions of
Wikipedia which are perfectly safe for Wikipedia, and also completely
ignored by almost everyone.

> I have no
> problem recommending that my kids go read a Wikipedia article on
> something they're curious about, and then go look at the sources cited
> in it for more information.

So, you'd let them go on the Internet unsupervised.

> If someone wants to make a Kidopedia, with everything nuked out that
> they consider child-unfriendly, more power to them. They're welcome to
> host that wherever they like. They could even work at having the
> project in language aimed more at children, and perhaps making a point
> to cite children's education sources in articles in addition to
> newspapers, science journals, etc. This is free content, and someone's
&

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> {{sofixit}}, just like any area with NPOV/undue weight issues.

"The next day someone will fix it back." - Douglas Hofstadter

> Good for him. Care to summarize his argument? I don't particularly
> care to watch his video, or for him in general after the
> OHNOESVIRGINKILLERIMAGE!!! hysteria a while back.

Yeah, it's pretty bad.

> You are, of course, starting from the presumption that the way you
> want to do it -is- the "responsible" way, or what have you.

As opposed to what, assuming that the way we want to do it is the
irresponsible way?

If I thought the way I wanted to do something was irresponsible, I
wouldn't want to do it that way any more!

> I have no
> problem with developing best practices, and certainly I don't think
> anyone will argue that we should host or retain porn or near-porn
> involving kids

Certainly some people will argue this.  I believe that, fortunately,
most of them are banned, though.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>>> {{sofixit}}, just like any area with NPOV/undue weight issues.
>>
>> "The next day someone will fix it back." - Douglas Hofstadter
>
> Such is the nature of this project. If no one ever did anything
> because of that possibility, no one would ever do anything at all.

Well, it's not just that it's possible, it's that I judge the
probability to be very high.

> Rather, many of us believe that it
> would be irresponsible to implement censorship on an uncensored,
> comprehensive educational project.
>
>>> I have no
>>> problem with developing best practices, and certainly I don't think
>>> anyone will argue that we should host or retain porn or near-porn
>>> involving kids
>>
>> Certainly some people will argue this.  I believe that, fortunately,
>> most of them are banned, though.
>
> Uh...wow. One would hope so. I don't believe that's very common,
> though. Certainly no one I've heard arguing against censorship is in
> favor of that.

But a policy against porn or near-porn involving kids *is* censorship,
is it not?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
>>>>> {{sofixit}}, just like any area with NPOV/undue weight issues.
>>>>
>>>> "The next day someone will fix it back." - Douglas Hofstadter
>>>
>>> Such is the nature of this project. If no one ever did anything
>>> because of that possibility, no one would ever do anything at all.
>>
>> Well, it's not just that it's possible, it's that I judge the
>> probability to be very high.
>
> Then, if your proposed change is opposed by a significant number of
> people, it would tend to indicate it has not gained consensus.

Heh.  Sorry, I have to laugh any time I hear a...person heavily versed
in Wikipedia-speak...use the word consensus.

> That,
> too, is the nature of the beast, when working on a project like this.
> I think we've all had an idea we strongly believe to be right fail to
> gain the consensus that would be needed to implement it.

Certainly.  And when this happens, sometimes we write about it, and
then someone says "so fix it", and we say "the next day someone will
fix it back".

You seem to be making the assumption that Wikipedia's notion of
"consensus" is the proper way to write an encyclopedia.  I by no means
am accepting that assumption.

>> But a policy against porn or near-porn involving kids *is* censorship,
>> is it not?
>>
>
> I suppose in the most technical sense it is, but that's a question of
> very settled and tested law, unlike 2257.

So, the only reason kiddie porn isn't allowed (*) is that it's illegal?

(*) Notwithstanding Virgin Killer, and perhaps a few other examples, anyway.

> In a very technical sense, forbidding penis vandalism is
> censorship, but I think most of us know the difference. Putting a
> picture of a penis on the article about a political candidate or
> sports team is unacceptable, putting a picture of a penis on the
> "Penis" article is much more likely to be done in good faith.

What if it's a picture of the penis of the political candidate?

You seem to think there's a clear line to be drawn that everyone
agrees upon.  But clearly there isn't.  Some people think the line
should be drawn in one place, and some people think it should be drawn
in another.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Anthony  wrote:
>> Heh.  Sorry, I have to laugh any time I hear a...person heavily versed
>> in Wikipedia-speak...use the word consensus.
>
> That's the way the project works. You or I can love it, or hate it, or
> rail against it, but that's the reality.

Sometimes I, and sometimes others, are going to write about the
results of it, okay?

>> So, the only reason kiddie porn isn't allowed (*) is that it's illegal?
>
> Child porn is illegal, that's been upheld by the Supreme Court
> repeatedly, end of discussion.

Well, moreover, it's illegal almost everywhere.  So yeah, putting it
on Wikipedia wouldn't be pragmatic.

But I'm just wondering if there's a principled reason for the ban in
addition to the pragmatic one.

> But even in a hypothetical (and highly unlikely) world where child
> porn was legal, a privacy issue exists there that does not exist in
> adult nude or sexual images, since children are incapable of giving
> real consent to participation in such a thing due to lack of maturity,
> whereas adults can and often do give informed consent to participation
> in photographed or filmed nudity or sexuality. I think that, too,
> would allow us to draw a distinction between sexual images of children
> and those of adults, since those of a child would be -by definition-
> taken without the subject's genuine consent.

Many images on Wikipedia have been taken without the subject's genuine
consent.  So surely that isn't the issue.

>> What if it's a picture of the penis of the political candidate?
>
> I can -conceive- of a case where that would be appropriate

So, commons is fine, I guess.

> In every case I know
> of, though, a candidate penis photo would be just as irrelevant as a
> macro photo of a few hairs on the candidate's head.

Convent pornography, cock and ball torture, and hogtie bondage,
though.  These are things that are relevant.

Or is it okay if, instead of putting the penis picture on [[Candidate
Whatever]], we put it in [[Candidate Whatever's Penis]]?

>> You seem to think there's a clear line to be drawn that everyone
>> agrees upon.  But clearly there isn't.  Some people think the line
>> should be drawn in one place, and some people think it should be drawn
>> in another.
>
> That goes back up to the above. When disagreement happens, we discuss
> it and come to consensus, if we can.

And what is "consensus"?

> If no consensus can be reached
> for an exception in a particular circumstance, standing policy (in
> this case, NOTCENSORED) serves as a fallback/baseline, and we go with
> that.

So, things are included (under NOTCENSORED), unless there is consensus
to not include it?

> Did you have another suggestion for a better process?

Yes, but first let me get a complete description of the current
process (starting with answers to the above questions).

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 1:46 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> Many images on Wikipedia have been taken without the subject's genuine
> consent.  So surely that isn't the issue.

In case you need an example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LeonardGSiffleet.jpg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:46 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>
>> Many images on Wikipedia have been taken without the subject's genuine
>> consent.  So surely that isn't the issue.
>
> Many are transferred to Commons from Flickr without the uploader's consent
> which, in the case of sexually explicit photos taken in a private location,
> should always be sought before doing the transfer.

Well, first of all, why?

Secondly, I'm not talking just about sexually explicit photos.
Wikipedia has photos of people being or about to be [[behead]]ed,
[[torture]]d, [[kidnap]]ped, [[assassination]]ed, etc.  I checked, and
there's no photograph of someone being [[rape]]d, just paintings, but
it's probably just a matter of time.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Anthony  wrote:
> Secondly, I'm not talking just about sexually explicit photos.
> Wikipedia has photos of people being or about to be [[behead]]ed,
> [[torture]]d, [[kidnap]]ped, [[assassination]]ed, etc.  I checked, and
> there's no photograph of someone being [[rape]]d, just paintings, but
> it's probably just a matter of time.

No photo on the [[child abuse]] article either.  Is this for pragmatic
reasons (no free photo available), or reasons of principle?

If someone added a photo of child abuse on the [[child abuse]]
article, and if it did not have any copyright issues, would it be kept
unless there was a "consensus" to delete it?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> Well, Todd has certainly said on-wiki in the past that he would not see a
> problem in Wikipedia using a video of rape to illustrate an article on the
> topic, provided it were appropriately licensed and did not raise privacy
> concerns (for example if the persons shown were no longer alive).

So would the same argument would apply to child porn, if the child is
dead, and if it weren't illegal?

The current situation seems to be that photos of child abuse are legal
(and are allowed on Wikipedia), and photos of sexual abuse are legal
(and are allowed on Wikipedia), but photos of child sexual abuse are
illegal (and aren't on Wikipedia except for a few disputed cases).

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Can you point me to any examples of real "child abuse", "sexual abuse" or of
> "child sexual abuse"?

On Wikipedia?  On Commons?  Anywhere?

For "child sexual abuse", I was referring mainly to the Virgin Killer
image (and as I said, whether or not the image constitutes this is
disputed).

For "child abuse", see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erichsen_Abused_San_or_Nama_child_prisoners_p._52_v2.jpg

For "sexual abuse", a simple search came up with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AG-10.jpg (which isn't on the
English Wikipedia except through image search, but is on other
language Wikipedias.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:
> But in practice, we do have photos of
> victims at articles such as [[Rape of Nanking]] and [[Holocaust]].
> Some of those photos are extremely disturbing. That's because the
> articles are about extremely disturbing subjects.

So legal + no "consensus" to delete = keep.

Fortunately "consensus" doesn't mean consensus.  Unfortunately, it
means something closer to mob rule.

>>  An article on marriage would show a video of a
>> marriage's consummation.
>
> No, it wouldn't. The consummation of a marriage is tangentially
> relevant. Photos of weddings and married couples in various cultures
> would be much more relevant. The meaning of "consummation" should be
> briefly touched on, but would not need anywhere near enough detail to
> be an illustrated section.

Why not?  The consummation of a marriage certainly deserves a section
in an adult version of an encyclopedia article on marriage.  I don't
think there should be a photograph of a consummation in Wikipedia, but
then I don't think there should be an photograph of a rape in
Wikipedia either, even in an adult version.  (For one thing, neither
illustration would do anything to enhance one's knowledge of the
topic.)

But what if some people want a photo and some don't?  No "consensus",
so we leave the photo in, right?

>> An article on Russian roulette would show
>> someone playing it. And so forth.
>
> Given that it's illegal in many areas, I would not hold out a high
> likelihood of us seeing someone voluntarily release a video of it. But
> let us presume that someone did. Isn't that exactly what the article
> is about?

Yes, it's exactly what the article is about.

But the article being about something does not mean there should be a
video of it.

Again, I don't see what a video adds to ones understanding of the topic.

>> This argument is not motivated by a desire to educate, or by educational
>> competence for that matter.
>
> Andreas, I realize we disagree on this in a lot of ways, but I think
> anyone who works on this project has a desire to educate.

Well, no, not everyone who works on "this project" does.  But the
personal attack on you was inappropriate.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 5:48 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 21.06.2012 22:51, schrieb Anthony:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
>>   wrote:
>>>
>>> Can you point me to any examples of real "child abuse", "sexual abuse" or
>>> of
>>> "child sexual abuse"?
>>
>> On Wikipedia?  On Commons?  Anywhere?
>
> Do i really need to answer this question, depending on where we discuss?

Well, I still don't know the answer.

>> For "child sexual abuse", I was referring mainly to the Virgin Killer
>> image (and as I said, whether or not the image constitutes this is
>> disputed).
>
> You call the Virgin Killer image "child sexual abuse"? Truly?

It depicts an instance of child sexual abuse, yes.

>> For "child abuse", see
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erichsen_Abused_San_or_Nama_child_prisoners_p._52_v2.jpg
>>
> I don't see any problem with this image. It documents child abuse as a fact
> without advocating it.

Okay, I don't understand your request.

I thought you wanted me to give you an examples of these images.

>> For "sexual abuse", a simple search came up with
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AG-10.jpg (which isn't on the
>> English Wikipedia except through image search, but is on other
>> language Wikipedias.
>
> I would be truly shocked if that image or another version of it isn't used.

"No pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file."

7 other Wikipedias do use the image

(Ah, going to [[Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse]] I see why.
The English Wikipedia is using the version of the image without the
blur/censorship.)

> Are that examples of images you find shocking or that should not be shown on
> Wikipedia or hosted on Commons?

I was responding to your request to point you to examples.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked "principle of least surprise" for the image filter?

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> I see a child, but i don't see sexual abuse. So i can't agree with you that
> it is an instance for child sexual abuse.

As I said, it is disputed.

> I should have written this question: Can you point me to examples of any of
> the previously mentioned abuses on Commons or Wikipedia that have no
> justification to be there?

I have no idea what the justification is for any particular image.  My
point was that Wikipedia contains plenty of images which were "taken
without the subject's genuine consent".

I am not the one who said that Wikipedia may not contain images which
were "taken without the subject's genuine consent".  That was brought
up by Todd Allen, and my purpose in showing that the images were in
Wikipedia was to show that this is *not* a valid criterion.

I do indeed think that the proper criterion, at least for the adult
version of Wikipedia, is whether or not the image is justified.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> The SOPA strike was necessary for us to retain neutrality.

Figuratively speaking, or do you think it actually made a whit of difference?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] TVTropes deletes all pages with "Rape" in title under advertising pressure.

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> On 27/06/2012 12:10 AM, Anthony wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Kim Bruning
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> The SOPA strike was necessary for us to retain neutrality.
>>
>> Figuratively speaking, or do you think it actually made a whit of
>> difference?
>
>
> I'm pretty sure it had an effect; if only that of increased media coverage
> (Wikipedia's visible action did focus much of the coverage).  To me, at
> least, it seems evident that the backlash against SOPA was stoked by that
> media coverage.
>
> So yes, I'm pretty sure it did make a difference.

As I recall SOPA was already dead in the water before the blackout
occurred.  Am I wrong about this?

The law was quite clearly flawed, even beyond what I think the current
US congress is capable of passing (at least, without some direct tie
to terrorism).

Interestingly, one of the best arguments against SOPA will be if Jimmy
Wales loses the argument about his newest cause.  If websites like
TVShack.net can be shut down without relying on SOPA-like language,
then this would be preferred, since 1) current law is much less likely
to hit legitimate sites like Google and Wikipedia; and 2) Extradition
under SOPA is much less likely to meet the dual criminality standard.

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

[Anthony]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 7:02 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 10 July 2012 09:22, Thomas Morton  wrote:
>> On 9 July 2012 20:41, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
>>> In less than half an hour Russian Wikipedia will go on one-day strike
>>> against SOPA/PIPA-like law in Russia [1] (in Russian).
>
>> Unless I am missing something key; whilst this is a crappy law, it is not
>> much like SOPA/PIPA in that it doesn't seem to threaten the existence of
>> Russian Wikipedia.
>
>
> You're missing something key: the way it's written, even articles on
> chemistry would be blocked.

So if the law passes, WMF is going to shut down Russian Wikipedia?

If the law passes, will WMF also shut down English Wikipedia?

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] SOPA, threat or menace (was Russian Wikipedia goes on strike)

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Seth Finkelstein  wrote:
> But the whole post gave me an impression of a good lawyer attempting
> to reconcile the imperative of being a zealous advocate for the
> interests of a client, while still remaining intellectually honest.

Well, it also has to be read keeping in mind that it would be
borderline malpractice for him to have stated "if SOPA passes then
Wikipedia will be in violation of the law and forced to shut down" -
just in case SOPA actually did pass, forcing WMF to argue the exact
opposite.

Due to this difficult position, I was surprised that he wrote anything
public about it at all.

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

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 10:02 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> The law just passed the third reading without any changes. It has to be now
> signed by the president and will be enforced in the present form on November
> 1, 2012.

So is this going to shut down Russian Wikipedia?  I still don't see
what the language has to do with anything.  The Russians don't have a
monopoly over the use of the Russian language (especially given that
there are countries other than Russia where Russian is widely spoken).

Maybe a better solution would be send all accesses from IPs in Russia
to a page describing how to use TOR.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] SOPA, threat or menace (was Russian Wikipedia goes on strike)

[Anthony]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Seth Finkelstein  wrote:
> Semi-digression - I'd take the above argument more seriously if dedicated
> Wikipedia editors didn't keep making "BADSITES" proposals.

It's also interesting to watch the overlap of PIPA-opponents, and
Citizens United opponents.

Without Citizens United upholding free speech of people who use the
assistance of corporations, something like PIPA would be much easier
to impose.  And the lobbying currently being done by WMF could very
well be outlawed.  The Wikimedia Foundation is, after all, a
corporation.

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.

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

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:47 AM, Mike Godwin  wrote:
> 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.

The connection is free speech.

> 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?

> and is even more regulated by
> virtue of its being a nonprofit corporation (NGO).

More specifically, by its being a 501(C)(3).  I'm not aware of any
regulation imposed by simply being a nonprofit corporation.  And even
other 501(C) corporations, such as 501(C)(4) corporations (like
Citizens United) are fairly unrestricted.

Furthermore, 501(C)(3) is a tax status.  The government isn't saying
that WMF can't be political.  It just isn't allowed certain tax
privileges if it does so more than a certain amount.  And in some
cases it is penalized if it takes the tax advantages first and then
does the actions later.

> There's no Citizens
> United connection with regard to anything being discussed here.

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.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] SOPA, threat or menace (was Russian Wikipedia goes on strike)

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:00 AM, Seth Finkelstein  wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>> Well, it also has to be read keeping in mind that it would be
>> borderline malpractice for him to have stated "if SOPA passes then
>> Wikipedia will be in violation of the law and forced to shut down" -
>> just in case SOPA actually did pass, forcing WMF to argue the exact
>> opposite.
>
> I perceive you've been very fortunate, in not having much experience
> with lawyers. Ponder if a health care mandate is a tax or not, or
> whether Mitt Romney thought it was in the past, or does now.

There's quite a difference between a President, a presidential
candidate, and a general counsel for a corporation.

> Moreover, there's already the problem you see in the argument where he wrote:
>
> "Wikipedia arguably falls under the definition of an "Internet search engine,"
>
> I'm quite sure that if SOPA actually did pass, WMF would then strongly
> argue the exact opposite, that Wikipedia absolutely does not fall
> under definition of an "Internet search engine" (as it is not a site
> "whose primary function is gathering and reporting, ... *indexed
> information* or *web sites* available elsewhere on the Internet")

Well.  1) I think Mr Brigham made a mistake in making a public
statement about this at all; however 2) He used the word "arguably".
If SOPA did (or does) pass, and WMF was charged with violating it
(which, frankly, would probably never happen), then surely they would
argue that Wikipedia is not an Internet search engine.  But not being
something and *arguably* falling under the definition of something,
are not mutually exclusive.

>> Without Citizens United upholding free speech of people who use the
>> assistance of corporations, something like PIPA would be much easier
>> to impose.  And the lobbying currently being done by WMF could very
>> well be outlawed.  The Wikimedia Foundation is, after all, a
>> corporation.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation's legal issues with lobbying are very far
> from the Citizens United sort of case.

Well, yeah, sure.  And WMF's legal issues with copyright infringement
are very different from the sort of cases that would be prosecuted
under PIPA or a PIPA-like law too.

But if the court in Citizens United had opened the door to restricting
nonprofit organizations from engaging in one type of grassroots
lobbying, I don't see how they could leave the door closed regarding
other types of grassroots lobbying, such as the type which WMF is
engaging in.  And really, I don't see how the could leave the door
closed regarding speech in general involving corporate expenditures.
Political speech is, for good reasons, the type of speech which is
most heavily protected by the First Amendment.

> The primary legal issue for WMF here is its
> tax-exempt status and the restrictions which go along with that. Which,
> sigh, is not to assert that WMF violated any such legal restrictions,
> but only to point out that such legal restrictions will become a
> limiting issue long before any corporations-aren't-people campaign
> finance laws.

Not at all.  501(C)(3) charities are allowed to engage in quite a bit
of grassroots lobbying without losing their tax-exempt status (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_lobbying#Public_Charity_Lobbying_Law).
 If Citizens United had gone the other way, there would be nothing to
stop Congress from eliminating the ability of corporations to engage
in grassroots lobbying altogether.

>
>> 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.
>
> Well, check if the WMF starts getting large donations from the likes
> of the Koch brothers or Karl Rove's Super PAC :-) .

Well, no...but there is
http://www.infodocket.com/2012/01/03/wikmedia-foundation-hires-dc-lobbying-firm/

And, of course, there is the (grassroots, not direct) lobbying that
WMF has already (visibly) engaged in.  I'm not sure if we'll have any
way to know if they've been involved in any direct lobbying until the
2011-2012 990 comes in.

> Oh, excuse me,
> it would be a community decision based on the extreme danger to
> Wikipedia from such measures (hmm, Wikipedia relies on the US
> Constitution, so anything which amends that COULD KILL WIKIPEDIA!!!).

Right.  Except, well, it doesn't fit in the political persuasion of
most Wikipedians.  Not as strongly as "copyright infringement is not
theft", anyway.

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

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Mike Godwin  wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Anthony  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.

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

> It does not
> address the question of whether corporations can engage in political
> activity.

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

>
>>> 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.

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.

Furthermore, I think it's a bit misleading to say that a 501(c)(3) is
prohibited from engaging in these activities.  IRC 501(c)(3) *defines*
a certain type of organization, which does not engage in certain types
of political activities.  Saying that a 501(c)(3) is prohibited from
engaging in certain political activities is like saying that a virgin
is prohibited from having sex.  If a virgin has sex, they cease to be
a virgin.  If a 501(c)(3) organization engages in "prohibited"
political activities, it ceases to be a 501(c)(3).

> I'm unaware of the Wikimedia Foundation's attempting to influence an
> election.

Surely you understand that one need not be directly affected by the
exact law being challenged to have a great interest in free speech
rights being upheld.

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

> 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.

I guess so.

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