On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Tim Starling <tstarl...@wikimedia.org>wrote:
> On 11/07/12 00:32, David Gerard wrote: > > On 10 July 2012 15:29, Tim Starling <tstarl...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > > > >> SOPA didn't threaten the existence of Wikipedia, > > > > > > Geoff Brigham opined otherwise, IIRC. > > Yes, on the basis that "Wikipedia arguably falls under the definition > of an 'Internet search engine'". > > < > http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/ > > > > The definition was: > > "The term ‘Internet search engine’ means a service made available via > the Internet that searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes > information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet and on > the basis of a user query or selection that consists of terms, > concepts, categories, questions, or other data returns to the user a > means, such as a hyperlinked list of Uniform Resource Locators, of > locating, viewing, or downloading such information or data available > on the Internet relating to such query or selection." > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3261/text > > It's hard to see how Wikipedia could fall under this definition, but > even if it did, what would be the consequences? > > "A provider of an Internet search engine shall take technically > feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in > any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or > within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent the > foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of > such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct > hypertext link." > > Geoff argued that we would have to manually review millions of links > in order to comply with such a court order. But the definition of an > "internet site" that would be specified under such a court order is: > > "[T]he collection of digital assets, including links, indexes, or > pointers to digital assets, accessible through the Internet that are > addressed relative to a common domain name or, if there is no domain > name, a common Internet Protocol address." > > We already index external links by domain name or IP address for easy > searching, and we have the ability to prevent further such links from > being submitted, for the purposes of spam control. The compliance cost > would be no worse than a typical [[WP:RSPAM]] report. > > Maybe SOPA was a "serious threat to freedom of expression on the > Internet", and worth fighting against, but it wasn't a threat to > Wikipedia's existence. > > -- Tim Starling Thank you. Well said. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l