Wikipedia's general counsel says goodbye

With just three days' notice to the staff, Mike Godwin left his job as Wikimedia Foundation's general counsel on Friday.

OK, what happened here?

Certainly one of the most colorful top lawyers we've ever covered on CorpCounsel.com, the Wikimedia staff wasn't exactly given ... a lot of notice prior to his departure.

Executive Director Sue Gardner announced the news on Tuesday in a public e-mail: "Hi folks, I want to let you know that as of this Friday, October 22, 2010, Mike Godwin will be leaving his role as General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. Mike's transition out of the role will be a fairly lengthy one: he will continue to be available to the Wikimedia Foundation to provide information and advice for several months to come."

Godwin definitely was a strong voice on free speech and Internet law. Back in August, Godwin delivered a biting response to a letter from FBI deputy general counsel David Larson, in which Larson asked Wikimedia to remove the image of the FBI seal from its online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

In his letter, Larson cited 18 U.S.C. 701, which states: "Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both."

Godwin pounced, responding in a letter dated July 30 that Larson's interpretation "is both idiosyncratic (made especially so by your strategic redaction of important language) and, more importantly, incorrect."

Godwin said that "while we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version" Larson provided. According to the relevant case law, it "was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognizable assertion of authority with intent to deceive."

In other words Wikipedia was not pretending to be an FBI or government web site.

So was the explosive confrontation with the FBI the reason for Godwin's departure?

Gardner's announcement says that: "The Wikimedia Foundation believes Mike has always acted in what he believes to be the Wikimedia Foundation’s best interests."

Gardner is not giving us much more than that. Attached to her announcement was an FAQ that included this cryptic Q&A:

Why is Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation?

Mike leaving the Wikimedia Foundation is a confidential personnel issue, and the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't talk about confidential personnel issues with anyone except the people directly involved. We want to handle this kind of thing with respect for people's privacy and dignity, and we are hopeful we can do that in this instance. That means, we’re not going to answer this question, and we hope you will understand why.

Reading further, the attachment also stated that Godwin's departure is not "over a point of principle" or "because he did something egregious."

As first noted by examiner.com, in terms of questions about the financial consequences of Godwin's severance, Gardner had another cryptic answer at the ready (when you consider that the majority of Wikimedia's pay numbers are disclosed publicly each year in a detailed Form 990 filed with the IRS):

The terms of the severance are confidential: we won’t talk about them now, or in the future.

Amid all of the mysteries, there's one thing we can say: We really hope that Wikimedia hires a new top lawyer who's half as funny as Godwin was.

(Published by Law.com - October 25, 2010)