The bloggers get it wrong, Wired says

by on February 15, 2007

Wired Magazine’s Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen says that the bloggers got it wrong about Ted Stevens “protecting children” bill. The Wired post ends: “Also the blog world famously claims it’s self-correcting. 27B anxiously awaits proof.”

Wikipedia isn’t commercial? Yeah, right.

By the way, Ryan and Kevin’s blog post doesn’t have a link to the bill’s text that works. Anyone have a link that works? Post it in my comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: WebProNews has a similar point in “DOPA Jr. Is Not A Wikipedia Ban” which includes more details on what the bill actually does.

  • hank williams
    "Ryan: hmmm, I agree that it’s a non-profit, but an entity that buys servers and bandwidth, pays employees, accepts cash donations is far from not being commercial. At least in my mind. Maybe we need to redefine what it means to be commercial."

    Robert, by your definition, Feed The Children, UNICEF, The United Way, and on and on would all be commercial. Having employees buying bandwidth and taking donations can't be the definition of commercial.

    Hank
  • Robert: That doesn't make an organization commercial. It just makes it... big. The only way I could see Wikipedia as being covertly commercial is by disguising the development costs of Mediawiki for Wikia. Of course, people can say Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation are separate entities, but they're "coincidentally" governed by the same people. And the corporation benefits from the Foundation's developments. And there's this thing about Wikipedia "ejecting" large communities, sending them over to Wikia (Wookiepedia, anyone?) to generate income for Wales' company.

    The good part of the deal is that we get to use MediaWiki under the GPL. MediaWiki being the wiki engine most users know, it's a good thing that we have that CMS available.
  • Ryan: hmmm, I agree that it's a non-profit, but an entity that buys servers and bandwidth, pays employees, accepts cash donations is far from not being commercial. At least in my mind. Maybe we need to redefine what it means to be commercial.
  • Peter
    If I could write any bill related to this into law, it would be very simple...

    If you prey on children sexually, and not touch them, you get life in prison with NO parole. They day they introduce you to prison, they announce to the general population that you are a child predator.

    If you prey on children sexually, AND touch them, you get the death penalty. No commuted sentences for turning in your cohorts, no leniency. Bullet in the back of the head. Nothing else works. Pedaphiles have the highest recidivism rate of all criminals.

    Let's support this bill, but make the above a reality. Nothing short of a real death sentence is a deterrent. The more pedaphiles gone the better.
  • Thanks for letting me know the link was broken, here's a good link: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc....

    Wikipedia is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a non-profit.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

    Best -

    RS
  • Hank Williams
    Well, actually, "commercial" presumably would not include any 4013c not for profit entity. I am fairly sure the wikipedia foundation is a 4013c, and so would have to qualify, by any measure, as not commercial.
  • Doesn't the fact that Wired published this story prove that the blog world will be corrected?

    Those who were interested enough to blog the subject are interested to hear this follow up and will adjust accordingly.

    This is different than in the past because when a major news source errs, the readers hardly see the correction which is a small, hidden blurb.
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