Mike Godwin
Mike Godwin | |
---|---|
Known for | Godwin's law |
Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the
Early life and education
Godwin attended
In his last semester of law school, early in 1990, Godwin, who knew
In 2017, Godwin married hotel leasing manager Sienghom "Jessy" Ches. According to Politico, he was in Cambodia in 2015 to help activists draft an "internet Bill of Rights", and they met in the business center of the hotel where she worked.[13]
Career
Godwin's early involvement in the Steve Jackson Games affair led to his being hired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in November 1990, when the organization was new. Shortly afterwards, as the first EFF in-house lawyer, he supervised its sponsorship of the Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service case. Steve Jackson Games won the case in 1993.[14]
As a lawyer for EFF, Godwin was one of the counsel of record for the plaintiffs in the case challenging the
Godwin has also been a staff attorney and policy fellow for the
From 2003 to 2005, Godwin was staff attorney and later legal director of
From October 2005 to April 2007, Godwin was a research fellow at
Godwin was general counsel for the
Godwin has been a proponent of net neutrality since 2006, along with other internet advocates such as Vint Cerf. When the Wikimedia Foundation agreed with major telecommunications providers to create Wikipedia Zero, an application that violated the principles of net neutrality, Godwin believed that the benefits of the program outweighed its negatives. Wikipedia Zero was discontinued in 2018.[28][29][30][31][32][33]
Godwin was named a member of the Student Press Law Center Board of Directors in January 2009,[34] of the Open Source Initiative Board of Directors in March 2011,[35] and the Internet Society Board of Trustees in April 2019.[4]
In June 2021, Godwin took a role as director in trust & safety at the media company TikTok. In October 2022, he began working at Anonym as the trust and safety lead.[8]
Popular culture
Character in The Difference Engine
The character "Michael Godwin" in the 1990 book The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson was named after Godwin as thanks for his technical assistance in linking their computers to allow them to collaborate between Austin and Vancouver.[12]
Godwin's law
Godwin originated Godwin's law in 1990,[1] stating:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.
Godwin believes the ubiquity of such comparisons
Bibliography
- ISBN 0262621037.
- ISBN 0812928342.
- The Splinters of our Discontent: How to Fix Social Media and Democracy Without Breaking Them. Zenger Press. 2019. ISBN 9781939888754.
See also
References
- ^ a b Godwin, Mike (October 1994). "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired. Retrieved March 24, 2006.
- ^ "Board Meeting Report". Open Source Initiative. March 17, 2011. Archived from the original on October 1, 2019. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
- ^ "Mike Godwin : Contributors". Reason.com. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
- ^ a b Al-Saqaf, Walid (April 18, 2019). "2019 Internet Society Board of Trustees Final Election Results". Retrieved May 1, 2019.
- ^ "Internet ain't broke, don't let AG try to fix it". clarionledger.com. February 11, 2015. Retrieved February 18, 2015.
- ^ Amira, Dan; Godwin, Mike (March 8, 2013). "Mike Godwin on Godwin's Law, Whether Nazi Comparisons Have Gotten Worse, and Being Compared to Hitler by His Daughter". "Intelligencer" department. New York. Retrieved September 23, 2013.
- ^ "Mike Godwin, the Creator of Godwin's Law, Is Suing Trump Over His TikTok Executive Order". Reason.com. August 24, 2020. Retrieved August 31, 2020.
- ^ a b Godwin, Mike. "Mike Godwin on LinkedIn". LinkedIn. Retrieved September 7, 2022.
- ^ Smith, Evan (August 19, 2007). "Re: A Complete Waste of Time". Texas Monthly. Austin, Texas. pp. "State of Mine: A Mostly Texas Blog" section. Archived from the original on March 28, 2009. Retrieved August 17, 2008.
- ^ Casey, Rick (August 13, 2009). "Commentary: Lamar grad laid down Nazi law". Houston Chronicle.
- ^ A call for TSP independence Archived September 30, 2007, at the Wayback Machine – editor Godwin's co-authored letter about Daily Texan reform, July 5, 2005.
- ^ a b Sterling, Bruce. The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier, 1992; download link from Project Gutenberg.
- ^ Sherman, Jake; Palmer, Anna; Lippman, Daniel; Montellaro, Zach (July 13, 2017). "Playbook Power Briefing: Trump and Macron meet in Paris – The New Senate Health Care Bill". Politico. Retrieved August 5, 2021.
- ^ Meme, Counter-meme Wired, October 1994.
- ^ "Reason Magazine — Articles by Mike Godwin: Contributing Editor". Reason.com. Retrieved July 19, 2009.
- ^ Reason Bruce Sterling interview January 2004, Neal Stephenson interview February 2005, Vernor Vinge interview May 2007.
- ^ "People at the ISP". Yale Information Society Project. 2006. Archived from the original on October 10, 2010. Retrieved October 11, 2010., listing Mike Godwin as Resident Fellow, 2005–2006.
- ^ "Resident Fellows". Yale Information Society Project. Yale University. 2006. Archived from the original on August 20, 2008. Retrieved January 25, 2008., listing Godwin as Microsoft Fellow, 2005–2006.
- ^ "Education". Yale PORTIA Project. 2007. Retrieved January 25, 2008., listing Godwin as Research Scientist, 2005–2007.
- ^ Welcome Mike! – Florence Devouard announcing Godwin's Wikimedia appointment, July 3, 2007.
- ^ Nick Farrell (July 5, 2007) Mike Godwin joins Wikipedia. Beware the Wiki-Nazis., The Inquirer.
- ^ Gardner, Sue (October 19, 2010). "Wikimedia Foundation Announcement: Mike Godwin leaves the Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
- ^ Patricia Paine (October 25, 2010) Wikipedia's General Counsel Says Goodbye, Corporate Counsel, law.com
- ^ Cohen, Noam (August 20, 2007). "Defending Wikipedia's Impolite Side". The New York Times. Retrieved August 20, 2007.
- ^ Sutter, John D. (August 3, 2010). "FBI to Wikipedia: Remove our seal". CNN. Archived from the original on August 4, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
- ^ Schwartz, John (August 2, 2010). "F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law". The New York Times. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
- ^ "Wikipedia and FBI in logo use row". BBC News. August 3, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
- ^ Net Neutrality in the Context of Provision of Fair and Equitable Access to Information Sources and Services, 2018-10
- ^ Vint Cerf recommending
- ^ Why Free Marketeers Want To Regulate the Internet, September 15, 2014.
- ^ Wikipedia Zero and net neutrality: Wikimedia turns its back on the open internet, August 8, 2014.
- ^ Everyone Should Be Getting Wikipedia for Free, June 4, 2017
- ^ Wikipedia Zero, Which Provided Over 800 Million Users in 72 Countries With Access to Wikipedia at No Data Cost, is Being Discontinued, February 18, 2018.
- ^ "Press Release: Student Press Law Center Welcomes Virginia Edwards as Chair; Patrick Carome and Mike Godwin to Board of Directors". Archived from the original on April 15, 2013.
- ^ Phipps, Simon. "OSI Board Meeting Report". The OSI Web Site. Archived from the original on October 1, 2019. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
- BBC News Magazine. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
- ^ Fishman, Aleisa (September 1, 2011). "Interview with Mike Godwin". Voices on Antisemitism (Podcast). U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on May 20, 2014.
- ^ Gilbert, Alexandre (August 17, 2017). "Godwin's Law & the Nazi Cosplay Hobbiysts". The Times of Israel.
- ^ Mandelbaum, Ryan F. (August 13, 2017). "Godwin of Godwin's Law: 'By All Means, Compare These Shitheads to the Nazis'". Gizmodo. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
- ^ Godwin, Mike (December 14, 2015). "Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you're talking about". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 9, 2017.
- ^ Godwin, Mike (June 24, 2018). "Op-Ed: Do we need to update Godwin's Law about the probability of comparison to Nazis?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 24, 2020.
- ^ McHugh, Calder (December 19, 2023). "'Trump Knows What He's Doing': The Creator of Godwin's Law Says the Hitler Comparison Is Apt". Politico. Retrieved December 19, 2023.
- ^ Godwin, Mike (December 20, 2023). "Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 20, 2023.
External links
- Mike Godwin on LinkedIn
- Official blog "Godwin's Law". Archived from the original on June 3, 2006.