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Double Bagging

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We had a huge debate about this article over in Wikitruth Tower, and the cleaning staff had to be called in a bunch of times to shovel out the piles of crumpled-up drafts we composed trying to figure out how to be informative and entertaining. This is a big deal to the Wikitruthers because if we're not entertaining, we're just another shrill critical blather trying to explain unbelievable amounts of backstory to get you to say "oh, that's a shame" before you browse back to your preferred fetish site. So please bear with us as we try and get this story out to you the best we can. We do think it's important.

[edit] Wikia and Wikipedia: What's the Deal?

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Perhaps you've heard of it.

Wikipedia was started as a side project by a pornographer and his smart buddies, back in 2001. There's a bit of a debate over who started what when and who helped with what, but most people agree that the project has webservers and people using it in 2001. These webservers were hosted at Jimbo Wales' porn site, Bomis, which took on the hit of bandwidth and power costs for the rapidly growing project.

In 2003, the project was moved to a new organization called the Wikimedia Foundation. This non-profit group was created to make the whole mess a lot easier to manage, make donations to the project tax-deductible, and generally give the whole process a veneer of respectability. Jimbo Wales became the Chairman of this foundation, of course.

In December of 2004, Jimbo Wales and Angela Beesley founded a company called Wikicities. This company was intended to be a revenue generating firm, entirely separate from Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, that would use the MediaWiki software (freely available for such use) to set up for-profit hosting of Wikis by way of accepting on-line advertising.

Wikicities was being run by Jimbo at the same time that he ran Wikimedia. This is unusual but not unheard of in the world.

And now... Fiduciary Duty!

[edit] Fiduciary Duty

One of the main ideas behind Fiduciary Duty is that your role as the guardian of a concern or principal imbues you with a responsibility to look out for the interests of the concern above your own needs or profit motives. If you're in charge of something and you short-change the thing you're in charge of to get yourself a little cash on the side, you are violating your fiduciary duty.

Back to the show.

[edit] Trademarks and Treason

In January of 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation registered "Wikipedia" as a trademark. ^[1] This application was formally approved in June of 2006. This registration was made to formalize the common law status of the "Wikipedia" trademark, which had existed since 2001.

As the chairman of the board of Wikimedia, it was among Jimbo Wales' duty to ensure the protection of this trademark, preventing any similarly-sounding enterprises from using terms close to it. This is not a minor duty; research into trademarks lost due to general usage and lack of protection by the owners abound... just check out the history of Nylon, Cellophane, Elevators, Zippers, and Trampolines. All were owned by an entity but were lost due to lack of protective measures.

If, for example, someone came along with a new trademark for an informational website called "Wikiarticles", and this was registered as a trademark for that website, Wikimedia could arguably have great reason to contest the trademark, even if they are ultimately overruled by the USPTO.

So what about something called "Wikia"?

[edit] Wiki Wiki Wiki

Wikia was the new name of Wikicities, which came into being in January of 2006 when it was re-incorporated in Delaware ^[2] (it had previously been incorporated in Florida). The cross-connects between Wikia and Wikimedia Foundation were pretty strong: Jimbo Wales was in control of both companies, as was Angela Beesley, who wisely resigned in July of 2006 from Wikimedia's board to put all her eggs in the Wikicities/Wikia basket. Michael Davis, who had been Jimbo Wales' manager back in the 1990s, was on both the Wikimedia Foundation's board (appointed by Jimbo), and was the Treasurer for both organizations.

If this sounds like a pretty smelly basket of fish, it most definitely was. So perhaps it comes to no surprise that when Wikia applied for trademark status in February of 2007, ^[3] nary a peep was heard from the Wikimedia Foundation. Browsing the history of the Wikia trademark, one can see that there were 90 days given for any outside entity to contest or question the uniqueness and non-misleading nature of the trademark. ^[4]

We contend, quite strongly, that the Wikimedia Foundation should have definitely contested this trademark. A wiki-providing company, with millions of dollars of investment, calling itself "Wikia", is on its very face exploiting the "Wikipedia" trademark for its own gain.

[edit] Silence

But we didn't hear anything from Wikimedia and it sailed through. Well, why would it, when the same person runs the boards of both entities, when the two organizations have the same treasurer/board member, and when the person who runs the board of the non-profit stands to profit quite heavily from the up-and-coming for-profit company?

We already hear the words ringing in our ears from Jimbo and David Gerard and the usual cast of Wikipedia apologists. Just trust in Jimbo! Handshakes were made! We don't know what we're talking about! We must be a bunch of trolling fuckwits! ^[5]

But the facts remain: this is an indication of how many things slide under the table, what activities of questionable ethics and legality happen within Wikipedia. People can act like these are minor quibbles, but we're talking of a top-ten-most-browsed non-profit website and its exploitation by a for-profit millions-invested company whose main members are all interrelated to the non-profit and stand to benefit from this exploitation.

And that's just not funny.