Interview with Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
BURNETT: So, today, I was on YouTube and typed in the phrase "Barbie Girl" as is I'm a Barbie Girl. Anyway, I was able to find a download of perfect audio version of the song. And to spare you my terrible voice, I was going to play it. And off with the band behind it, it didn't get a cent when I downloaded it. Actually, we have taped this and I was playing it and danced and all that. But Will Surratt (ph), our executive producer, was worried that we get sued. So, we're not playing it. But the point is, if you know the song, this is part of the giant battle inflaming the passions of millions, including the co-founder of Wikipedia. In fact, if you go to Wikipedia at midnight tonight, the Web site will be dark. You can't go there. Wikipedia is shutting down in protest of legislation that's working its way through Congress called the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. You may remember, we were one of the few to report on the story last week. Since then, it's blown up with tech giants Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay and AOL joining the fight against SOPA and supporters throwing their muscle behind it, including the parent company of this network, Time Warner, which owns HBO. So, what is SOPA? It's a proposed bill that aims to crack down on copyright infringement, meaning it protects Aqua from people like stealing songs. But SOPA would also restrict to entire Web sites that host even one piece of content that's obtained without permission. Critics say that's unreasonable and it would cost a lot of money. Earlier, I spoke to the man at the center of this entire story, co-founder Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. He joined me from Switzerland, and a U.S. television exclusive, and we asked him about stealing songs by Aqua and "Barbie Girl" and why he's so passionate about this issue.</s>JIMMY WALES, CO-FOUNDER, WIKIPEDIA: Well, for us, the openness of the Internet, the freedom of speech issues are really paramount. You know, one of the things that we do know is that in the U.S., we have a perfectly reasonable and workable regime for dealing with copyright violations. So, for example, if the group Aqua wants to have that song removed from YouTube, all they have to do is notify YouTube and YouTube has the responsibility to take it down. That's not really the issue here. The issue is things like DNS blocking, blocking overseas sites that have some infringement content, placing all kinds of burdens on community generated sites like Wikipedia to police everything that our users are doing in an unreasonable way. I'm a big believer that we should be dealing with issues of piracy and we should deal with them in a serious way, but this bill is not the right bill.</s>BURNETT: So, let me ask you about something specifically. I mean, you're talking about Wikipedia. And what it appears to be a fair point, right, that how are you supposed to police everything in a site that is created by millions and millions of people around the world? But there's a Web site we found called Pirate Bay, really exists for the purpose of sharing content that it doesn't own, pirated content. They have a lot of popular shows available on that Pirate Bay. "Glee," "Deadliest Catch," "Lost," a whole lot of others. Do you support sites like that or does that fall on that's a problem you think needs to be fixed?</s>WALES: Yes. For me, I think that site is a problem. And I think the right way to fix it is not to place censorship on the Internet, not force Google to stop listing them, not to force Wikipedia to stop talking about them. The right answer is: follow the money. If you have large scale piracy going on, it's this same as any other trade dispute and I think that's the right approach.</s>BURNETT: So, for you, give me an example of how this would restrict free speech on something like Wikipedia, if this act passes.</s>WALES: Well, there's a lot of different versions in the act. In the worst versions of the bill, Wikipedia would be defined an as search engine and would not able to even link to something like the Pirate Bay, even in our encyclopedic description of what Pirate Bay is. I think that's a real problem. That raises really serious First Amendment issues.</s>BURNETT: So, Rupert Murdoch, obviously News Corp. And on the side of people who like this act because obviously they make a lot of content. But here's what he said. He was angry at President Obama for jumping on your side of this. He said, quote, "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery." Why is he so wrong?</s>WALES: Yes. It's such a ludicrous statement, I don't even know where to begin. Certainly for Wikipedia, we're not anybody's paymasters. We're at charity devoted to sharing free knowledge. We're a community that's come together to build an encyclopedia and give it away for free to everyone. We have absolutely no positive interest in encouraging piracy or we have no way of profiting from piracy. It's just completely ludicrous.</s>BURNETT: All right. Well, Jimmy, thank you very much for taking the time. Appreciate it.</s>WALES: Yes, thank you for having me on. It's really great.</s>BURNETT: All right. And let us know what you think about SOPA. But don't try go to Wikipedia tomorrow. Some sites in Europe are already shutting down -- 25 million people a day go to Wikipedia. All right. Well, thanks so much for watching. Sorry to pain you with singing. But that's what Will Surratt did to our show tonight. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" starts right now.