Flip Flopped wrote:Kawasaki is really a useless Wales attachment at this point. I've never understood Lessing either.
From the book wiki's Berkman Center article, in the "Faculty" section:
"Yochai Benkler ("Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies" at Harvard, has spoken at Wikimania many times) [4] Quote: "The author of The Wealth of Networks, Benkler said he had been studying Wikipedia since it was four months old." Benkler was one of Wikipedia's first cheerleaders and apologists, having mentioned it favorably in his infamous 2002 Yale Law Review article Coase's Penguin.
"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 [5])
"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.)"
From the Creative Commons article:
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, Google co-founder Sergey Brin married Susan Wojcicki'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. See Blackout (January 2012).
July 2012: Kat Walsh (one of Wikipedia's deepest insiders) became legal counsel for Creative Commons. Her long connections to Jimbo and company paid off.
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. Plus Joi Ito, who has messed with Wikipedia biographies many times, including his own. A majority of the board members 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.
From the Brad Patrick article:
August 4, 2006 Speech by Jimmy about how they met.
About few months ago, in September 2005, I got one of these goofy emails. It said: I'd be very interested to speak with you about your ideas and how they interact with certain ideas of mine. It would be a pleasure to meet you and have a bite to eat. And this was from this character here, which is Brad. And then, you know, it's very dangerous to have lunch with me, because the next thing, you know, you might end up with a job. So, this was Brad on his first day at work.
Brad: The part that Jimmy failed to mention about the email, was that I believe the email was dated in August of last year [i.e. August 2005]. What I did was invite him to lunch and I found out ... My path to Wikipedia was very simple. A year ago when Jimmy was giving his talk on ten things that should be free and I read in on the Lessig blog, which I have been reading religiously for a very long time. And I said, you know, I wonder where this foundation is. I have no idea, I thought, in San Francisco maybe, somewhere. And I looked and I see it's in Saint Pete, Florida, which is twenty minutes from where I live. I thought, not in my backyard. I need to go and meet this guy, and I need to find out who their lawyer is and I want to be their lawyer. So, in October, Jimmy emails me and says: so, can you call the office and we can set up a lunch date. August, October, so ... in December, we got together and had lunch [laughter].
Emphasis added. Okay?
OF COURSE the "advisors" are all FOJs. Of course.
