QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 14th December 2011, 8:40am)
QUOTE
SOPA has earned the dubious honor of facilitating Internet censorship in the name of fighting online infringement. The Wikimedia Foundation opposed that legislation, but we should be clear that Wikimedia has an equally strong commitment against copyright violations. The Wikimedia community, which has developed an unparalleled expertise in intellectual property law, spends untold hours ensuring that our sites are free of infringing content. In a community that embraces freely-licensed information, there is no room for copyright abuses.
Bullshit. Commons contains thousands of images snatched from Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa,
usually taken with no attempt to verify ownership or permissions. I even know which admins
are doing this, and have been doing this for years.
If Geoff really was so smart, he wouldn't work for Jimbo's Folly.
Whenever someone from corporate management, any corporate management, tries to blow sunshine up everyone's patooty with rosy, general statements like this, the way to respond is asking for specifics: Exactly what measures does the WMF take to ensure there are no copyright violations in its projects? Is the number of violations found each year measured and recorded? If so, what are the numbers per year? Is copyright violation oversight incorporated into the WMF's 5-year plan? If not, why not? How much does the WMF spend each year on copyright infringement oversight? How many personnel are assigned to the issue? Are their performance evaluations based on their performance in this area? and so on...