Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales Says MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd Should Be Fired

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:02:14 +0000

Jimmy Wales is currently not a fan of the MPAA. The MPAA and RIAA are the two organizations that especially pushed for SOPA and PIPA, which was proposed legislation for censoring the Internet. At the DLD conference in Munich, Jimmy Wales is going as far as saying that MPAA chairman Chris Dodd should be fired as reported by VentureBeat.

“Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” stated Dodd in recent interview with Fox News. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Wales said that this makes the MPAA sound like a corrupt and Congress-buying organization. Dodd also had harsh words for Wikipedia by saying that it was an abuse of power when they blacked out on January 18th to protest SOPA. Wales said that it was successful because 10 million people contacted Congress. Wales said “That’s not an abuse of power, that’s democracy.”

He added “[Dodd] had best get used to it.”

Wales strongly opposes digital piracy, but he believes that Hollywood should talk to Silicon Valley with a little more humility rather than approaching with a Draconian regime.

Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Other Tech Company Execs Sign Petition Against SOPA

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:49:35 +0000

Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.

The timing of this letter coincides with the scheduled committee vote taking place tomorrow with a revised version of the Act. The revision of SOPA will “give the U.S. government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.” Below is the full letter from the Internet executives:

An Open Letter to Washington
We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.
However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act–which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online–will undermine that framework.
These two pieces of legislation threaten to:
* Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
* Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
* Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
* Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.
We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Donates $500,000 To Wikipedia

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:27:12 +0000

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin has made a $500,000 grant to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is attempting to raise $28.3 million for its annual budget. The donation was made as part of a foundation created by Sergey and his wife Anne Wojcicki.

Every year Wikipedia hosts an annual fundraiser instead of using advertisements. The fundraiser will be running through January. Last year’s campaign raised $16 million towards the $20 million budget.

“If everyone reading this donated $5, our fundraiser would be over today,” stated Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. “Google might have close to a million servers. Yahoo has something like 13,000 staff. We have 679 servers and 95 staff. Wikipedia is the #5 site on the web and serves 450 million different people every month – with billions of page views. Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.”

[Ars Technica]

Banner With The Face Of Jimmy Wales Helped Increase Wikipedia Donations

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:04:56 +0000

People sometimes react positively when the face of the founder of a company is prominently displayed on their website. In this case, it worked well for Wikipedia. In an effort to raise $16 million for keeping Wikipedia ad free, the company wanted to double the amount they asked for last year.

It turns out that Wikimedia was able to raise in a week what took a month last year. Wikimedia raised a little bit under $3 million in eight days. Last year it took 36 days to make that amount of money.

“I think more and more people everywhere are recognizing the impact Wikipedia has made on their lives– the rapid rise in donations this year is the response,” stated Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson Moka Pantages. “It’s now the go-to place for anything you need to know. These donations are thousands of people all over the world expressing gratitude and supporting the efforts of the Wikipedians who work long and hard to keep this thing alive and growing.”

Another reason for Wikimedia’s growth is because they started using a banner that features the face of Jimmy Wales. In the infographic below, you will notice the amount of donations that were provided as a click-through from their different banners.

[ReadWriteWeb]

Bloomberg Interviews Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales [VIDEO]

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:58:57 +0000

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was on Bloomberg TV earlier this week to clarify that there has not been a mass exodus of voluntary editors. Wikipedia is still very much driven by the community.

Wales also revealed some interesting numbers about Wikipedia. To maintain Wikipedia, it costs around $10 million per year. The website survives primarily off of donations. So far Wikipedia has over $3 million in donations for the year.

Personally I’m impressed by how little it costs to maintain Wikipedia. On a per day basis, it costs about $27,397.26 to keep Wikipedia running.

What about some of the other top websites? As a comparison, YouTube costs about $2 million per day in just storage and bandwidth. Facebook most likely costs close to $300,000 per day considering that they are hosting 10 billion photos. In 2007 and early 2008, Facebook spent around $67 million on rackable servers. Facebook most likely spends $500 million per year between servers, employee salaries, infrastructure, office space, and other miscellaneous costs.

Below is a video of the interview [via BusinessInsider]:

Pierre Omidyar’s Investment Firm Gives Wikipedia $2 Million Grant

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:47:01 +0000

Omidyar Network, the investment arm of Pierre Omidyar’s wealth has made a $2 million grant. Pierre is the founder of eBay and his personal wealth is roughly $3.6 billion. The Omidyar Network was started in 2004 and there was about $270 million in assets given to the investment firm.

Some of the Internet companies that the Omidyar Network invested in include Digg, Federated Media Publishing, KaBOOM, Seesmic, Linden Lab, and Wikia. Wikia is another company that was founded by the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Wikipedia receives about 300 million monthly unique visitors and is the 5th most visited website in the world. However Wikipedia runs on donations and does not have any advertising. At the end of last year, about 125,000 donors invested $6.2 million in helping keep Wikipedia alive.

Of that $6.2 million, $3 million was given by the Sloan Foundation and an anonymous friend gave $286,800. As part of the investment, Matt Halprin of Omidyar will be joining the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors. Before working at Omidyar, Halprin was the VP of global trust and safety at eBay.

Jimmy Wales Decides To Shut Down Wikia Search, Focusing On Wikianswers

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:23:40 +0000

Wikia was a search projected founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. The company was founded in 2004 and has about 42 employees based in San Mateo, California. Since the company started, they have raised about $14 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and Amazon.com.

Jimmy Wales pointed out that Wikia.com itself has seen tremendous growth. It was the fifth growing member community destination in February 2009. The top 4 were Twitter, Zimbio, Facebook, and Multiply. Wikia.com’s Wikianswers Q&A website was seeing the most growth and so the company has decided to pay more attention to that service. Basically Wikia Search wasn’t seeing the success that they were hoping for. Going forward the Wikia Search project will be shut down on March 31, 2009 and it will forward to Wikianswers.

Wikipedia Raises Over $6 Million In Donations

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:49:11 +0000

Recently Jimmy Wales put up a plea for an increase in donations for Wikipedia. The open source online encyclopedia has reached its goal of raising $6 million in donations. The $6 million that Wikipedia has raised will keep operating expenses covered up until June 30, 2009.

Jimmy Wales stated that 125,000 have donated $4 million in personal donations and $2 million in gifts. The $6 million will go towards bandwidth, 23 staff members, and other misc. costs.

“Any donations beyond our $6 million goal are put in a reserve fund, which will help us to offset operating costs beyond the current fiscal year,” stated Wales. “Your continued support will also serve as a much-needed financial safety net if economic conditions continue to worsen globally.”