Tim Starling wrote:
According to ru.wp Arbcom member DR, the danger to
Wikipedia was
overstated, and the text of the proposed law was misrepresented.
I think that the interpretation to the bill given by DR is incorrect. In fact the proposed
bill was not only about child pornography and extremism, but also about drugs and, about
“information, prompting children to commit actions, making threat to their life and
health”. That was a very loose clause, that could ban virtually anything. After the
blackout this clause was removed from the bill and it is a clear achievement of the
strike. On the other hand the final version of the bill contains another clause, that is
even more hazardous to us. It is about “information of methods of producing and use of
narcotic substances, … of methods and places of cultivation of narcotic plants”. We do
have information of drug synthesis on Wikipedia, ways of its use (e.g. marijuana) and we
do have thorough instructions of marijuana cultivation on wikibooks. That is why our
achievements are ambiguous. On the one hand we have a removal of a loose clause about
information harmful to children, but on the otherwe now have another clause that is even
more dangerous. That is why we are still trying to do what we can via our contacts within
the authorities to revise the passed bill.
But that is not all. The most important issue is extremism. According to the bill, the
materials, that are banned for distribution in Russia should be included to the register
of banned information on the ground of the court decision, banning the distribution of
that information in Russia. We already have such court decisions and a list of extremist
materials, distribution of which is prohibited in Russia. That list contains some really
nasty materials, as e.g. nazi propaganda, but also Islamic texts (including those of
famous non-terrorist Islamic authors e.g. Said Nursî), Saentologist, Jehova’s witnesses ,
Falun Gong, letters and materials of opposition in Russia, works of contemporary art,
etc.
We *do have* banned extremist materials in Wikipedia. E.g. this image:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Александр_Савко_Путешествия_Микки_Мауса_п…
искусства.jpeg
is considered extremist and is banned for distribution in Russia. (Hopefully it was
uploaded two years before it was regulated as banned by the court).
This letter in wikisource is also considered extremist:
http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Всем,_кто_сочувствует_жертвам_бесланского_тер…!
This is enough for banning the IPs of Wikimedia projects in Russia. And I am really afraid
of this.
I guess DR is aware of discussion on this list, but anyway I will inform him of it. Maybe
he has something to add.
According to Levg in his Arbcom application, again via
Google
Translate, "It should be noted that there are no objective reasons for
such a 'sprint survey' did not exist, to discuss the bill on second
reading has been known since at least last Friday."
That is our fault that we could not manage to get the information in time. The first
hearing was on Friday, but the community and myself got to know about the problem only on
Monday, 9th. What for me personally I haven’t read the news on the weekend (yes, it is
bad, that I relaxed on the weekend and haven’t read the news), and I failed to get to know
about the problem in time. I guess it is also true for others. If we start to organize on
Friday, the result would be better. It is a fault, but anyway it was not a deliberate
fault, as nobody has informed the community earlier.