CBC News has revealed that Canada’s totally useless Industry Minister Jim Prentice has had his Wikipedia page “Fluffed” by someone in the Industry Ministry according to Michael Geist:
“The edits, discovered by University of Ottawa internet law professor Michael Geist — a vocal opponent of Prentice’s pending copyright legislation — have been anonymously made over the past week with several attempts to remove criticisms of a bill the minister is expected to table before Parliament breaks for its summer session some time over the next few weeks. Geist, who was tipped off by a reader of his blog, tracked the IP address of the person or persons making most of the edits back to Industry Canada. A spokesperson for Prentice did not return several requests for comment.”
Keep in mind that he’s been under fire from all directions, including from Internet uses for not having a net neutrality strategy for Canada’s Internet. So it doesn’t come as surprise that he (or someone close to him) would want to lie revise history a bit. Too bad they forgot one minor detail. Wikipedia logs all IP addresses which makes it really easy to see who edits a page. Oops! You’d think that Industry Canada staff would be smart enough to drag their laptops to the nearest Starbucks and do the edits from there so that there’s plausible denialability? If they can’t do that much, it would explain why they don’t have a net neutrality policy as well as coming up with some really stupid Intellectual Property laws for Canada. Clearly we need smarter people and a smarter minister in that department.
By the way, this isn’t the first time that this sort of thing has happened. Several US politicians got caught doing the same thing a while ago. Talk about losers.
Wikimedia Says Nyet To The Russians
Posted in Commentary with tags Russia, Wikipedia on March 4, 2022 by itnerdThe Wikimedia Foundation has been “approached” by the Russian government to significantly alter their coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war on Wikipedia. The Russian arm of The Wikimedia Foundation put this demand in a Tweet which I have taken the liberty of translating for you:
Roskomnadzor is Russia’s communications agency. Sort of like the FCC in the United States. Or the CRTC in Canada. According to The Verge, Wikimedia has pretty much told the Russian government where to go and how to get there:
“On March 1st 2022 the Wikimedia Foundation received a Russian government demand to remove content related to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine posted by volunteer contributors to Russian Wikipedia,” reads the statement sent to The Verge via email. “As ever, Wikipedia is an important source of reliable, factual information in this crisis. In recognition of this important role, we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world.”
The Russians are really trying to keep the outside world from letting Russian citizens know what is really going on. It’s as if they are trying to hide something from their citizens. #sarcasm
In any case, I for one am happy that The Wikimedia Foundation isn’t backing down from Russia. You have to stand up to bullies like Russia so that they know that their behaviour is not acceptable in a civilized society.
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