[Noisebridge-discuss] Should NB mirror WikiLeaks?

[Meredith L. Patterson]

On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 02:20:34PM -0800, Christie Dudley wrote:
> Off course the EFF is shaking in their shoes, afraid of getting their status
> yanked, not wanting to take sides in the issue:
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/amazon-and-wikileaks-first-amendment-only-strong
> 
> <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/amazon-and-wikileaks-first-amendment-only-strong>

The EFF is in a unique position, as a legal defense organization, to have to be very careful about not only what actions it takes, but what actions it might be perceived as inciting people toward taking. Being a law firm that basically engineers stunts in order to challenge statutes is a no-no. That's the price they pay for being the ones who defend us when we do things that generate Constitutionality tests.

But that's a legal malpractice issue, not a "the federal government will pull their 501(c)(3) status" issue.

Note that when the IRS investigated the Mormon Church's involvement in campaigning for Proposition 8 (after thousands of citizen complaints), the church walked away with a minimal fine, and it certainly hasn't lost its status as a church. However, given the selective attention that the US government seems to be paying right now, I think the chances that they would engineer some excuse to pull Noisebridge's 501(c)(3) status are roughly even.

However I do think it would be entirely within reason to host Wikileaks-related events (special interest groups, whatever) at Noisebridge -- I dunno, hackathons for some of the open-source tools that Wikileaks relies on, just to name one that you wouldn't really have to invoke 1A freedom of assembly to defend.

Cheers,
--mlp