[Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

Wed Dec 14 12:08:38 UTC 2011

Hi all;

Looks like Wikimedia Foundation is very worried about censorship and the
cut off of fundraising payment processors. Now.

What did WMF do when WikiLeaks domains were seized and its fundraising
payment processors (PayPal, Visa, MasterCard) were cut off? Did WMF protest
against Internet censorship? No.

WMF did nothing. Well, Wikipedia community wrote this disclaimer "WikiLeaks
is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation"[1] on the
top, and turned a blind eye.

Now it is your turn. Enjoy.

Regards,
emijrp

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

2011/12/14 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com>

> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Jay Walsh <jwalsh at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Today the Wikimedia Foundation posted an important update on how the Stop
> > Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation being considered in DC this week
> > threatens an open and free web, and particularly how it threatens
> Wikipedia.
> >
> > The post is authored by WMF's General Counsel, Geoff Brigham, and can be
> > found here:
> >
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/how-sopa-will-hurt-the-free-web-and-wikipedia/
> >
>
> "Under the new bill, there is one significant improvement.  The new
> version exempts U.S. based companies – including the Wikimedia
> Foundation – from being subject to a litigation regime in which rights
> owners could claim that our site was an “Internet site dedicated to
> theft of U.S. property.”  Such a damnation against Wikimedia could
> have easily resulted in demands to cut off our fundraising payment
> processors.   The new version now exempts U.S. sites like ours."
>
> I am genuinely not anti-american. The logic here does escape me though.
>
> --
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
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