[Noisebridge-discuss] Partisan definition

Sai noisebridge at saizai.com
Thu Dec 9 03:31:15 UTC 2010


On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:36 PM, Shannon Lee <shannon at scatter.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that this is a lawyer question, and speculation by
> non-lawyers will just get us in trouble.

What about just reading the IRS regulations? On this one they're
fairly clear IMO.

http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=163395,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=154712,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=155030,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=179432,00.html
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rr2007-41.pdf

Be doöcratic. Read the damn things yourself.  I did, and I'm not even
on the board; you actually have (at least hypothetical) responsibility
to know them. :-P

They're actually written well (pretty shocking, for a huge and
byzantine government agency), and meant for individual corporate board
members or the like to be able to understand.

They're all pretty clear: the rule is, 501(c)3s may not do advocacy
that is specific to some particular candidate or registered US
political party. They may engage in issue advocacy and education.
Merely *hosting a mirror* (or pointing to one) isn't even close to
that; it's less "political speech"  than (say) that MemoryHole wiki
page is.

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_(American_organizations)

Note that they hardly ever do anything more than say "don't do that"
unless it's seriously egregious (e.g. directly paying some politican's
campaign fund), and that's even IF it's partially infringing, which
hosting a wikileaks mirror is not.


In all seriousness: if it were my nonprofit and I had legal
responsibility, I would have zero problem authorizing it on these
grounds. (This isn't theoretical; I've had to make some decisions on
this kind of question for the LCS.)

This 501(c)3 issue is a red herring; I've shown you several primary
sources agreeing with me. Please drop it, or cite a case where the IRS
has ruled against something similar.

I think the other issues (political or organizational pressure,
copyright or espionage claims, use of scarce NB bandwidth, retributive
sanctions against government employees or future employees, etc. etc.
related to the intrinsic risks of hosting content itself) are the real
things needing discussion, with real risks.

And likewise, I think what others have been saying - that we should
also be organizing distributed replication - is absolutely correct. I
do think that giving a domain name to it (via a redirection script or
even just multiple A records) would be helpful in promoting access to
those otherwise mothballed backups, and that just lending our name to
the cause would be helpful as well.


But fear of this sort is what chilling effects are all about. I kinda
want to say that we should do it *because* there are these threats to
freedom of the press, *because* we are even casting this discussion in
terms of "removing the liberties of others" via the potential
governmental threats against members or other hackerspaces for
perfectly legal but politically transgressive activity rather than in
terms of those threats removing *our* liberties.

Everyone who gives in to this shit just makes it get worse; rights are
a case of use 'em or lose 'em. I thought this was one of the core
parts of hacker ethic. I'm dismayed that I seem to have been wrong.

I think the more anarchist among us would make that case better than
I; I'm really not much good at appealing to emotions, and for once (!)
I think that's needed here.

I find it hard to believe myself saying this, but… Jake, care to give
a speech? This is your domain.

- Sai

PS FWIW, I'm not actually anti-government/institution/whatever; I'm
just anti-anti-liberty, and my response to intimidation attempts,
especially ones not well grounded in both legality and ethics, is to
resist harder.



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