Wikipedia, Creative Commons, and Google

[EricBarbour]

This is an area which no one has ever examined in any depth. I've not found any old WO or WR threads on it.

Let's start out with a little story.

In September 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to get their new search engine off Stanford servers, so they could make a publicly-traded company out of it. So they went to a friend who had a house in nearby Menlo Park, and she offered to let them put their own server rack (I use the term advisedly, it was in fact a homemade pile of cheap PC motherboards mounted in a crude wooden frame, and the Computer History Museum now owns it) and connect it to the Internet via a leased T1 line. If they covered other expenses, the space was free.

The house owner's name was Susan Wojcicki.

(You will note that her name is not mentioned in History of Google (T-H-L). A few years later, Google rewarded her, by hiring her and her husband. Susan is now one of the most powerful vice-presidents at Google.)

In December, Salon raved about Google. In March 1999, Google outgrew the homemade rack, so they moved to commercial office space in Palo Alto and secured venture capital to buy proper equipment. By 2003, Google was the world's most popular Web search engine. Google Inc. is now the largest Internet company on earth, and the largest advertising firm on earth, with annual revenue in excess of $50 billion per year as of 2012. For about eight years, google.com was the world's most popular website (until recently, when Facebook replaced them at the top of the Alexa 50).

In December 2001, prominent law professors Larry Lessig, Hal Abelson, Michael Carroll, and attorney Eric Saltzman helped start a nonprofit dedicated to developing and supporting free licenses for intellectual creations that would normally be subject to copyright laws. It was called Creative Commons. They, and secretary Diane Cabell, had known each other from membership in organizations that preceded CC, such as Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Stanford's Center for Internet and Society.

In March 2006, Jimmy Wales joined the Board of Directors of Creative Commons.

In November 2006, three things happened.
*November 2: Google donated $30,000 to the Creative Commons group.
*November 13: Google bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion.
*November 28: Google announced a gift of $2m to the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, which was founded by, um, Larry Lessig.

In May 2007, Sergey Brin married Susan's sister Anne.

In April 2008, this announcement verified what many had already suspected: Google and CC were already working closely together.

In July 2008, the Board of Directors of Creative Commons offered a Board position to a high-school teacher from Palo Alto.
Her name: Esther Wojcicki.
Yes, her daughters are Susan and Anne. Esther does not seem to have any substantial experience in IT or in copyright law.
She taught journalism to high-school kids for 25 years.

In April 2009, Wikipedia began changing its content license from the old GPL to a Creative Commons license.
That same month, Esther became the Chair of the Board of Creative Commons.

In July 2009, CC announced yet another "special arrangement" with Google.

In August 2009, the Brin-Wojcicki Foundation gave Creative Commons $500,000.

In February 2010, Google Inc. gave the Wikimedia Foundation $2 million.

In 2011, Robert Levine published his book Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business. In which he repeatedly accuses major websites like Google and Yahoo of lobbying and pushing to weaken copyright laws, because major Web firms benefit from free content. Supported by their apologists, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Creative Commons. A major violator of traditional copyright was pointed at: YouTube, owned by Google.

In November 2011, the Brin-Wojcicki Foundation gave the Wikimedia Foundation $500,000.

In December 2011, an open letter was sent to Congress demanding that the SOPA and PIPA bills be killed. Among the signatories: Creative Commons board members Caterina Fake and Jimmy Wales, Sergey Brin, and a mixed bag of Web billionaires. That same day, Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation ran an item calling for protests against SOPA.

18 January 2012, Wikipedia displayed a black screen, with a warning about SOPA and PIPA, instead of its usual content. Reddit, Digg and some other popular websites followed suit. An explosion of rage followed. Millions of angry messages were sent to Congresspeople, and SOPA and PIPA died in committee. (The vote on Wikipedia about having this protest was heavily sockpuppeted.) Extensive media coverage.

Look at the present board of Creative Commons. It includes a lot of people from the Hewlett Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation (both of which help to fund CC), Stanford Law, Harvard Law, the MIT Media Lab, etc. etc. Plus Caterina Fake, one of the co-founders of Flickr. And a former Google product developer. A majority of them have degrees or teaching experience at either Harvard, Stanford or MIT, or connections to other major nonprofit organizations. Typical of the board of an "important" nonprofit. Jimbo is one of the few that doesn't fit the profile -- except for being the Sole Flounder of Wikipedia.

Now isn't that a funny little story?

This is only a basic framework. Anyone else is welcome to add to this narrative. Suggestion: it might make a nice blog post.

[EricBarbour]

Funny little postscript:

While searching through the Creative Commons website, I ran across this blog item.
The equipment rack behind Kevin Rose is full of my company's products.

[lilburne]

Who will stop Google?
Imagine that it’s 1913 and the post office, the phone company, the public library, printing houses, the U.S. Geological Survey mapping operations, movie houses, and all atlases are largely controlled by a secretive corporation unaccountable to the public. Jump a century and see that in the online world that’s more or less where we are. A New York venture capitalist wrote that Google is trying to take over “the entire fucking Internet” and asked the question of the day: “Who will stop Google?”
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/25/who_wil ... e_partner/

[thekohser]

I love threads like this -- would be an excellent blog post.

[Wer900]

I actually support the weakening of copyright, and hope for an eventual goal of 20 years of copyright on all works. The reason for this is not because I am a "free culture ftw" person, but rather because I think that any scientific, cultural, historical, or contemporary value from works that old would be reduced, with commercial value being increased, due to copyright. If the sole purpose of copyright as we know it is to protect commercial interests (which is becoming increasingly true) then I think that it should be dramatically reformed. Either material should be released under a free license (noncommercial if the creator wishes, to the chagrin of Google and other Internet firms) or it should be given to the public domain entirely, with free, noncommercial licensing being the default.

On another note, this explains a lot of why Wikipedia does not have an NC license.

[EricBarbour]

As long as we're talking about this, I might as well mention the Berkman Center.

The WP article about the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (T-H-L) is hopelessly out of date and semi-useless, but it does have a list of "fellows":

• *John Perry Barlow (EFF co-founder, classic crackpot libertarian)
  *danah boyd (went to MIT and Berkeley, apparently friends with Elonka)
  *John Clippinger (well-known business consultant http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jclippinger)
  *Tamar Frankel (Boston U law professor, helped set up ICANN)
  *Benjamin Mako Hill (longtime Wikipedian)
  *Rebecca MacKinnon (another Harvard grad, became a member of the WMF board of advisors in 2007)
  *James F. Moore (Harvard law prof, very left-wing, used to work for Democratic politician Howard Dean)
  *Doc Searls (major open-source software evangelist, involved in the "Cluetrain Manifesto")
  *Wendy Seltzer ("sits on the board of directors of the Tor Project, and of the World Wide Web Foundation. A former At-large Liaison to the ICANN board of directors" and used to work for the EFF)
  *Peter Suber (Harvard "open access" fan; and on the WMF Board of Advisors)
  *Jimmy Wales
  *David Weinberger (amazingly similar to Moore above, also worked for Howard Dean, involved in the "Cluetrain Manifesto")
  *Dave Winer (major open-source evangelist, good friend of Searls, involved in the "Cluetrain Manifesto")
  *Mayo Fuster Morell (Spanish social scientist, does studies of Wikipedia, longtime Wikipedian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lilaroja)
  *Ethan Zuckerman (director of MIT Center for Civic Media, and on the WMF Board of Advisors)

Fifteen people, Jimbo Wales plus six other people having ties to Wikipedia and/or the WMF.

And the "faculty" includes;

• *Yochai Benkler ("Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies" at Harvard, has spoken at Wikimania)
  *William "Terry" Fisher (Harvard Law, major reformer of copyright law, wants the government to pay content creators out of taxes and let everyone download everything for free, completely nuts if you ask me)
  *Urs Gasser (Berkman executive director, very well-connected law professor in the Internet area)
  *Lawrence Lessig (the most "connected" guy on any of these lists, cofounded the Stanford equivalent of the Berkman Center, and Creative Commons -- knows everyone)
  *Charles Nesson (Harvard Law, takes notorious cases, edited his own Wikipedia bio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Co ... ons/Nesson)
  *John Palfrey (Harvard Law, anti-censorship extremist and close friend of Lessig, coauthored a really stupid book with Gasser, was quoted in the NY Times "I would use Wikipedia. I think it's a fabulous, fabulous place to turn. Because some of the information is absolutely credible and really useful.")
  *Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard CS prof, went to Yale AND Harvard, cofounded "Chilling Effects" with Wendy Seltzer, also on the boards of the EFF and Internet Society, almost as well-connected as Lessig..... "Wikipedia—with the cooperation of many Wikipedians—has developed a system of self-governance that has many indicia of the rule of law without heavy reliance on outside authority or boundary." Such a smart guy, yet so clueless.)

[EricBarbour]

Thanks for posting that Salon article about Google. They have, indeed, managed to dominate the Web while avoiding antitrust actions.
The people on the boards of these various organizations often have multiple relationships with each other -- usually involving money.

It's a fairly small crowd, and (just like Wall Street) highly interconnected. Thing is, the WMF sits somewhat off by itself, with no "big names" to speak of on its board of trustees or in the employee rolls. Jimbo is their "point man" is most every way. Tracing all the connections will simply drag you away from Wikipedia.

Don't forget, Google runs a political action committee now, and they give out a lotta money. To a weird mix of Congress people.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot. ... cycle=2012

I've seen indications that people tried to figure out who the top management of Google is. They tend to be VERY secretive about everything. But there's a list of PAC donors, and it's full of Google management, board members, and major investors.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave ... cycle=2012
Names you'll recognize, other than known Google insiders: "Internet father" Vint Cerf, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (previously spokesperson for Google), Google-love blogger Matt Cutts (I really dislike that guy), Mike Cassidy (MIT and Harvard grad, and headman at their insane "Project Loon" nonsense), and a variety of people who are on the boards of other corporations. And of course, Susan Wojcicki.

Look at Google's board of directors. Includes John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, and Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel.
Plus Ram Shriram, also on the board of directors of Stanford.
http://investor.google.com/corporate/bo ... ctors.html

Google might as well be an arm of Stanford, or vice versa.

Google has repeatedly avoided antitrust actions. One of them, in 2009, involved its board. Levinson left the Google board, and Schmidt gave up his board membership at Apple.
http://www.techspot.com/news/34570-over ... quiry.html
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/ ... ric_1.html

They recently arrived at a "deal" with the EC's antitrust authority. Not very favorable to the EC, it seems.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman ... t-battles/

The author of that article, Eric Goldman, wrote a paper in 2006 about search engine bias, which seems to be "Google friendly".
Almost completely ignored.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... _id=893892

But again, we're moving away from the WMF.

[lilburne]

I think you'll find that wikipedia is the example that they all trot out as the counterpoint to copyright. At each stage they'll minimize or ignore its problems, as acknowledging the issues may result in people examining the entire edifice of web2.0 and discovering that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes.

[EricBarbour]

I think you'll find that wikipedia is the example that they all trot out as the counterpoint to copyright. At each stage they'll minimize or ignore its problems, as acknowledging the issues may result in people examining the entire edifice of web2.0 and discovering that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes.

It seems so. And Zittrain and Lessig and their little friends, being "prominent digerati" and such, can sit there and spew all kinds of
nonsense about Wikipedia's "magic". We do have an uphill battle with this book, no mistake. So the book will have to at least
partly discuss the CC/Google/Berkman etc. connections, and show how they all fit together.

PD has spoken to quite a few people by now, and usually when he brings up the Google/anticopyright connections, they usually
go into a rage, because "there ain't no connection, you're talking conspiracy crap" and so forth. Marvelous bit of propagandizing.
Even the honest ones believe the lies. Seth Finkelstein is welcome to weigh in here (yeah, I know you're reading this).

[EricBarbour]

I haven't gone into the EFF yet.

So: consider Joe Kraus (T-H-L), an EFF director:

Kraus was CEO of JotSpot, which was purchased by Google in 2006. While at Google, Kraus has been director of product management at Google. Among his projects there is OpenSocial, Google's effort to develop API standards for social networking platforms. He moved over to the Google Ventures team in November 2009.

Kraus helped to lead the investment for Google Ventures in OpenCandy and is on their Board of Directors.[2]

FYI, OpenCandy (T-H-L) is an intrusive software installer for PCs. It puts ads into the software it installs. Might as well call it "malware".

Plus, there's Brad Templeton (T-H-L), former EFF chairman, "considered one of the early luminaries of Usenet". Since
Usenet figures heavily in Wikipedia's early history, there's another connection.

Templeton's replacement as EFF Chairman was John Buckman.
Buckman wrote his own Wikipedia biography, which was merged to the Magnatune article in February. It was there for more than five years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ination%29

Self-promo that has basically not changed since Mr. Buckman himself wrote it in 2007 [1]; I fail to find any articles about this guy from after 2007. Article is sourced mostly to press releases, blogs, and corporate sites, with only one SELF-AUTHORED WP:RS

In 2006, Buckman was put on the board of directors of Creative Commons. Previously, in 2003,
this was posted about his "record label" Magnatune. Written by Matt Haughey, founder of Metafilter.

Same names keep popping up, over and over.

[Daniel Brandt]

I'm thinking that it may be time to resurrect Google Watch, a site I started in 2002. This time around it would have a post-Snowden spin, in that it would specialize in discovering links between Google and the national snooping state.

This article, while it doesn't involve Google, gives you an idea of how it might be useful to take another look at Google, just in case.

On the old Google Watch, I had this posted for years:

In October, 2004 Google acquired Keyhole, Inc., which has a database of 3-D spy-in-the-sky images from all over the globe. Their software provides a virtual fly-over and zoom-in with one-foot resolution. Keyhole is supported by In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm funded by the CIA, in an effort to "identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests."

In 2003, Keyhole's CEO John Hanke was quoted in an In-Q-Tel press release: "Keyhole's strategic relationship with In-Q-Tel means that the Intelligence Community can now benefit from the massive scalability and high performance of the Keyhole enterprise solution."

The spooks in Washington now had another hook into Google, Inc. Then in mid-2005, Rob Painter joined Google as Senior Federal Manager. He came straight from In-Q-Tel, where he had been Director of Technology Assessment.

Even Matt Cutts, whom I feel is on the "decent guy" end of the Google spectrum (even though my ED bio is still at number one and he hasn't replied to my request to have that link killed), used to have his resume posted on this site. I grabbed it back around 2003, and soon after that he took it down. I'll quote one item on it:

January 1992 - August 1994

Department of Defense, 9800 Savage Road, Ft. George G. Meade, MD 20755-6000

Co-operative education student

Completed four work tours (over a year total) with the National Security Agency. During my first tour I produced a sizable report on UNIX security which resulted in a $500 Special Performance Cash Award. On other tours I worked on natural language processing tools, telecommunications, and hardware design of an encryption chip.

Strangely enough, that's not mentioned in Matt's Wikipedia bio, even though David A. Vise, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post, starts off the Matt Cutts chapter in his book, "The Google Story," by mentioning the National Security Agency connection.

Or maybe that's not so strange after all.

[Peter Damian]

I think you'll find that wikipedia is the example that they all trot out as the counterpoint to copyright. At each stage they'll minimize or ignore its problems, as acknowledging the issues may result in people examining the entire edifice of web2.0 and discovering that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes.

Yes yes yes. Wikipedia is the poster child for all this nonsense.

Good stuff Eric, by the way.

[EricBarbour]

I'm thinking that it may be time to resurrect Google Watch, a site I started in 2002. This time around it would have a post-Snowden spin, in that it would specialize in discovering links between Google and the national snooping state.

Yes, PLEASE bring it back. You have my permission to reuse anything I've posted on this thread.
In fact, I would recommend making a chart showing the major organizations, and the people who connect them.
It will be very impressive, and I expect a lot of progressive organizations will reuse it extensively.

Don't forget to mention TOR, beloved by freedom extremists everywhere. It wasn't built by open-source nerds or by Bitcoin fans,
it was built by the US Naval Research Laboratory, and taken over later by the EFF. To this day, the US government is a major
funder of TOR operations. And much of the traffic it carries is still top-secret federal government information. Along with hacker
info and illegal-drug orders from Silk Road. It's a shame Philip Dick didn't live to see this, he would have written several books about it.

TOR is a minor part of Wikipedia history: people used it all the time, to cover up their identities.

[EricBarbour]

To be fair, I might also point out that the "copyright lobby" is even slimier than the free-culture gang, and evidently has deeper
connections to Washington than Google etc. although that might be changing.

For example, get a copy of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated (T-H-L), which shows how the MPAA
"rates" motion pictures. It is quite disturbing. (One of the interviewees: Larry Lessig!)

Or consider the "Mickey Mouse Act", which is discussed in the WO blog.
http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/05/04/th ... lt-disney/

[EricBarbour]

Esther Wojcicki: A Jewish mother of the tech revolution

Funny that it fails to mention that the youngest daughter is married to Brin.

[HRIP7]

I love threads like this -- would be an excellent blog post.

+1

[EricBarbour]

Whups, almost forgot to point out something else.

One of the members of the WMF's Advisory Board is Neeru Khosla.

Her husband is Vinod Khosla (T-H-L), one of the wealthiest and most powerful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
In March 2008, the Khoslas gave the WMF $500,000.
In December 2008, Neeru was made a member of the WMF's Advisory Board. Interesting timing.

(Neeru's pathetic article was originally started in December 2008, by none other than Alison Wheeler.
Original co-founder and co-destroyer of Wikimedia UK and close friend of David Gerard.)

[EricBarbour]

Major shit-explosion today about a major vulnerability found in Google's Android smartphone OS.

Getting a lot more coverage than usual (I've long suspected that Google was intimidating tech journalists into keeping quiet about problems with Google's "open-source" software, which isn't actually completely open source).

http://www.businessinsider.com/androids ... ity-2013-7
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07 ... 45216.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23179522
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/04/android-security-hole/

I'm surprised this story is getting traction. Because as these maps revealed recently.....
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-a ... live/5961/
....rich people use iPhones, and poor people use Android phones.
Announcements of iOS vulnerabilities always attract lots of publicity, Android, not so much.

Don't bother looking any of this up on Wikipedia. The relevant iOS articles are being "sanitized". Although the iOS article does complain about iOS being a "closed" OS.......who's quoted? The EFF, the Free Software Foundation, Brewster Kahle, and Jonathan Zittrain.

But the Android article goes on and on about its issues. Thanks to a series of obscure accounts, like "Limefrost Spiral" and "Rapture's Sander Cohen", who look like paid editors.

Later I'll talk about Public Knowledge. They have close ties to some of these outfits, as it turns out.

[greybeard]

Eric, I can't tell sometimes whether you've always been a member of the tin-foil hat brigade, or if you're just now signing up.

Some of the above smacks of an astonishing naivete. How do you think the boards of non-profits, even ones who fancy themselves influential, find volunteer board members? They ask their friends, relatives, and friends-of-friends. College boards are no different, except they also have alumni. People who sit on boards, along the same lines, tend to be people who can take time off regularly from their jobs, if they have them at all, or whose employers support the work, or who are independently wealthy.

Do boards recruit (and cross-recruit) members who can make substantial donations? You bet they do. A board seat is a very common "reward" for large or sustained donations.

....rich people use iPhones, and poor people use Android phones.
Announcements of iOS vulnerabilities always attract lots of publicity, Android, not so much.

I use an Android phone, always have (since I switched from Palm). I prefer the open-source platform, and I don't (as a rule) like Apple products. Your reading of the map you post is laughable. There is essentially one current model of iPhone, and about 5 past models. There are hundreds of distinct models of Android phone, from a dozen manufacturers, at every price point, including entry-level ones. iPhones come at a single price point, mostly quite expensive. Repeat after me: (apparent) correlation is not causation.

I'm not going to defend Google. They're a big company and they do some pretty stupid big-company things, just like the other big companies. They sure set themselves up for a whuppin' with the silly "Don't be evil" motto.

What I'm saying here is that you need to be very careful for confirmation bias in your research. It is a bugaboo, and you are falling hard into it, IMHO. You think Google is at the center of an evil web of rich technocrats who want to rule the world (I exaggerate only slightly), therefore you find and connect dots that support that thesis. It doesn't make the thesis true.

[EricBarbour]

What I'm saying here is that you need to be very careful for confirmation bias in your research. It is a bugaboo, and you are falling hard into it, IMHO. You think Google is at the center of an evil web of rich technocrats who want to rule the world (I exaggerate only slightly), therefore you find and connect dots that support that thesis. It doesn't make the thesis true.

This is not the "research" I'm posting here, just a mishmash of material. The actual research goes into the book wiki or elsewhere. I do not guarantee nor state that any of this material will make it into the book.

Yes, it's a given that corporations and nonprofits often share board members (a practice that I find to be sometimes disturbing, and occasionally outright corrupt, you are welcome to disagree) and often have other interconnections. Trying to establish a baseline for showing how the WMF "grew up", if you can call that outfit a "mature" one, and using whatever I can find. No one has ever done this before.

So, you were an insider at xxxx and one of the internet's pioneer users; why don't you tell us more about their role in the development of open-source software and the net?

[EricBarbour]

A nasty story for you. And little reported.

The University of California regents have a great idea: start a private for-profit corporation to "monetize" research performed at UC facilities with tax dollars.
The businesspeople keep the profits, the taxpayers get screwed. Halleluja.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/p ... id=3619535

(You will notice that the current Chair of the UC regents is none other than crazed Hollywood studio executive Sherry Lansing. Notorious for her tantrums. She's on the boards of several nonprofits, as well as a few corporations. Connected. And what the hell does she know about running a state university?)

[Poetlister]

And what the hell does she know about running a state university?)

Companies are always bringing in chairmen and chairwomen who know nothing about the business but do know how to chair a company. Sometimes it works.

Adam Crozier (T-H-L)

[thekohser]

Sometimes it works.

Adam Crozier (T-H-L)

And sometimes it don't.

[greybeard]

Sometimes it works.
Adam Crozier (T-H-L)

And sometimes it don't.

Please note that there is a world of difference between the roles of an operating CEO or Executive Chairman, and that of a non-executive Chairman. The latter is concerned with governance and oversight, rather than operations and strategy. Virtually all non-profit Board Chairs are of the non-executive type.

[EricBarbour]

Shall we go over Craigslist and Craig Newmark, and his connections to the WMF? He's one of the slimiest entrepreneurs
on the web, and not many people have the slightest idea of his past dirty tricks. Somewhat akin to Jimbo, in fact -- but worse.

[Vigilant]

Shall we go over Craigslist and Craig Newmark, and his connections to the WMF? He's one of the slimiest entrepreneurs
on the web, and not many people have the slightest idea of his past dirty tricks. Somewhat akin to Jimbo, in fact -- but worse.

Please.
I've no time to dig and love a good tale.

[EricBarbour]

His short and rather uninformative article contains nothing "bad" -- because a variety of administrators and insiders watch it carefully.
It enjoys "pending changes" protection, because Philippe Beaudette made it so in July 2010--one of the first en-WP articles to be so blessed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... on=history

There used to be several articles Craig didn't like.

"Craigslist controversies and illegal activities by users", which was deleted and redirected to the main Craigslist article in May 2009, despite an AFD vote to keep it.

There was also "List of Craigslist Killers", deleted at about the same time.

There was also an article called "Craigslist killer", which was fiddled with repeatedly, then finally erased and redirected to "Internet homicide". One has to look carefully to find mention of actual Craigslist killers therein.

And just by the by, Newmark has given large sums of money to the Wikimedia Foundation.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translat ... ors/source

And repeatedly blogged favorably about Wikipedia.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-new ... 77880.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-new ... 93600.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... ary/69509/

And became a member of the WMF's Advisory Board in 2009 -- a few months after "Craigslist controversies and illegal activities by users" was deleted.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/craigs ... ory-board/

And helped the WMF to raise funds.
http://wikipediareview.com/lofiversion/ ... 27801.html
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Craig_Appeal/en

As for his cash cow? Did you know that he sues anyone who tries to make third-party applications to make Craigslist easier to use?

Plus, Why Craigslist Is A Mess.

"Though the company is privately held and does not respond to questions about its finances, it is evident that craigslist earns stupendous amounts of cash. One recent report, from a consulting firm that counted the paid ads, estimates that revenue could top $100 million in 2009. Should craigslist ever be sold, the price likely would run into the billions. Newmark, by these lights, is a very rich man. When anybody reminds him of this, the craigslist founder says there is nothing he would care to do with that much money, should it ever come into his hands. He already has a parking space, a hummingbird feeder, a small home with a view, and a shower with strong water pressure. What else is he supposed to want? Frustration over these sorts of replies sometimes becomes comical. In a July 2007 television interview, Charlie Rose spent half the program attempting to get Newmark to admit his good fortune, and failing. "I don't have anywhere near as much control as you think," Newmark said."

"Buckmaster and I talk in the San Francisco penthouse condo of Susan MacTavish Best, who owns a small PR company. Best and Buckmaster lived together as a couple for five years. Though they are now separated, they remain friends, and she continues to serve as a kind of translation mechanism by which the hints and silences of craigslist management are converted into responses suitable for the press. Queries, in recent months, have concerned mostly sex and violence. That the world would expect craigslist to take responsibility for the rare violent criminal who lures victims through an ad strikes Buckmaster as absurd. He points to the thousands of people who die every year in auto accidents. "Does anybody call up the head of GM and say, 'Somebody just got killed using your product? How can you sleep at night? Don't you realize that a person is dead?'""

"By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist's programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve, and any right they have to teach lessons in public service comes from the odd situation of running a company that is directly subservient only to the public. Here's the lesson: The public is a motherfucker."

Emphasis mine.

Much of the 2009 coverup of unpleasant article content about Craigslist was the work of Justmeherenow (T-C-L).
Who used to fight over articles about Mormon history. "Odd character".
In 2010 he was accused of sockpuppeting, deleted the notice of the SPI, and disappeared.

[EricBarbour]

I quote Kelly Martin:

"Newmark makes Wales look like a saint. While Wikimedia's clientele is obviously obsessed with images of sex, and Wikimedia does nothing to blunt their enthusiasm, they don't actually profit all that much from it. Meanwhile, Craigslist's adult services section is far and away the most profitable portion of their service, as they charge for listings there. A good chunk of their revenue is directly derived from being a pimp. Of major sites, only Backpage is scummier."

NOTE: If anyone can get me a copy of "Craigslist controversies and illegal activities by users" before deletion, please let me know.

[mac]

I quote Kelly Martin:

"Newmark makes Wales look like a saint. While Wikimedia's clientele is obviously obsessed with images of sex, and Wikimedia does nothing to blunt their enthusiasm, they don't actually profit all that much from it. Meanwhile, Craigslist's adult services section is far and away the most profitable portion of their service, as they charge for listings there. A good chunk of their revenue is directly derived from being a pimp. Of major sites, only Backpage is scummier."

NOTE: If anyone can get me a copy of "Craigslist controversies and illegal activities by users" before deletion, please let me know.

You mean this?

[EricBarbour]

You mean this?

Thanks. If the article was deleted in 2009, why was it still being edited in 2011? WTF is going on here?

[Poetlister]

You mean this?

Thanks. If the article was deleted in 2009, why was it still being edited in 2011? WTF is going on here?

It wasn't deleted. Please let's get our facts right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... s_by_users

Closed as keep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... st_killers

Closed as merge.

[EricBarbour]

It wasn't deleted. Please let's get our facts right.

Sorry, you're right. Distractions.
The ultimate point should be that those articles contained a number of incidents and media reports, all of which eventually
disappeared from Wikipedia without a trace, other than these AFDs and talkpage arguments (what little there is).

[EricBarbour]

Courtesy of Greg, originally posted in the paid-editing thread:

Did you know that the Sunlight Foundation (T-H-L) has former Wikimedia Foundation board member Matt Halprin on its board of directors, and that Jimbo Wales himself serves on Sunlight's advisory board?

Did you know that in the summer of 2010, the IP address 71.191.1.8 (T-C-L) that geo-locates very close to the Sunlight Foundation's headquarters had a 100% focus on adding tons of content to the Wikipedia article about the Sunlight Foundation?

Did you know that the Sunlight Foundation's project coordinator, Nicko Margolies, has extensively edited the Wikipedia article about the foundation?

And let's not forget this IP editor 68.33.193.160 (T-C-L), helping to add lots of stuff to the Sunlight Foundation article, all from a location in Washington DC, where Sunlight is headquartered.

Good job, Matt Halprin and Jimmy Wales! Your communication of the Bright Line Rule to the folks on your Sunlight board has worked astoundingly well.

[EricBarbour]

I'm reviving this thread for one reason: Andrew Keen has a new book. And parts of it apparently look like something from this thread.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00JLQ4Q9A

Counterpunch review:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/09/ ... g-machine/

There are numerous other social maladies that the Internet enables. It provides instant gratification for anger and rage; a nasty email is never more than a few seconds away. Keen quotes Ryan Martin’s observation that “the reason anger is so viral online is that we are more prone to share our rage with strangers than our happiness.” That statement by itself is troublesome as hell. Women, particularly, come under attack in numbers never seen before. There are Nazi groups and racist forums. Bullying has never been easier. Consider ISIS’s easy recruiting on-line. Keen calls it the encouragement of “global tribes” but tribes that no rational person would want to join. “Trust is the greatest casualty” on the Internet. Even something regarded as benign as Wikipedia (especially its medical sites) is riddled with incorrect information. Viewer beware.

Public service, the public good, that’s a forgotten concept. Keen is unsparing of what he calls “the libertarian elites” who want to eliminate all oversight, all regulations, all concern for the safety of others. He cites Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, as living in a “feudal landscape” where the old rules no longer apply. It’s an Ayn Rand dream come true. Uber—and others of its ilk—“have detached themselves from reality of the increasingly impoverished communities around them.” Quoting Charlotte Allen, Keen cites the “‘Silicon chasm’ in the Bay Area, between digital billionaires and analog beggars.” And the villains are not only the CEOs (Larry Page, and Sergy Brin, Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick, and Mark Zuckerberg) but also all their original angel investors and enablers: Peter Thiel, Shervin Pishevar, Michael Birch, Balaji Srinivasan—white males only.

Some reviewers of Keen’s book have called him a Luddite, but that is far from accurate. I’d call him a prophet, though I confess that when I first heard of The Internet Is Not the Answer, as a former academic, I conjured up something entirely different from what he has written about: plagiarism. The Internet has spurred plagiarism to new heights. Many students (especially international ones) believe that writing a paper is simply a matter of patching things together from articles from the Internet. I said “many students” but most of us who consider ourselves practicing journalists know that such stealing from previously printed work is not limited to students. Worse, the Internet hasn’t helped writing in general—it’s basically ruined it.