I've tried making that argument, but most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV. Also, I cringed a bit when I read that summary, because every phrase screams "leftist academic". That's one of the quickest and easiest ways to get dismissed by moderates and center-right allies.

Sounds a lot like Mozilla's attempts to clone everything that Google does, except in a half-assed way. Kind of funny, really, because I hadn't actually thought to connect Steve Ballmer and Asa Dotzler like that before. When you think about it, though, they seem pretty similar. Neither Microsoft nor Mozilla seem terribly interested in actually doing anything until Apple/Google do it first.

Sad. They were once a really great company.

Yeah? When was that? The 1950s?

Well, yeah. But Google has an enviable image and works in emerging markets, where they can set consumer expectations. Microsoft has a crap image and works in entrenched markets, where customers have strong opinions and entrenched ways doing things. This is a bit of a simplification, of course, but I think it helps to explain why people complain so much about everything that Microsoft does, while they give Google a free pass.

There's a difference between opt-in and covert actions taken without permission.

However, I don't see why anyone would let MIT have access to their e-mail account, just so that they can simulate having the civil liberties violated. But, then again, I don't see the point to a lot of things that get posted to Slashdot.

You're an asshole, but you're a moderately funny asshole. That kind of makes up for being an asshole. But you're still an asshole.

I don't think it's necessarily right wing nutjobs. More likely, it's just plain old ordinary nutjobs, plus some authoritarian, nationalist nutjobs. There are plenty of Libertarians that support WikiLeaks and Snowden, and Libertarians are pretty far to the right.

I think they'd rather just cover their eyes and ears.

thats right, become a vandal and disrupt the wiki in order to save it.
the wikiwhiners are out in full force tonight

Wikipedia is mirrored by several sites. Additionally, anyone can download the entirety of the site, if they wish.

If the WMF pulled the plug tomorrow, there'd still be mirrors, hardcopy versions (check out the number of published books on Amazon that are nothing but printed Wikipedia articles), the official Wikipedia 1.0 hardcopy version, and numerous partial mirrors that were reconstructed through browser caches.

I'm not worried.