[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal wants to censor social media

[Srikanth Lakshmanan]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 12:06, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala at gmail.com> wrote:

> fyi
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to
> Censor
> social
> Date:   Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:02:10 +0530
> From:   Achal Prabhala <aprabhala at gmail.com>
> To:     Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>

I just want to write that there was a community member who seemed to be of
the notion ImageFilter is the technical fix for what Kapil Sibal is
proposing(without probably understanding / knowing much) and connecting the
two distinct things. Yes Sibal showed some images as examples for his
support, but what Sibal means is much more and prescreening of every byte
of user generated content. Please tell that member that linking up 2
different things is not a good idea. ImageFilter needs to be discussed with
its own merits / demerits and this thing that Sibal proposes means much
more than images.

If at all the legislation comes and is being enforced, I think Wikimedia
projects are better equipped *technically* than other social media sites
cited to support the local laws(so that we need not be banned if that goes
to that extreme) with a combination of ImageFilter / FlaggedRevisions and
some more customizations, but thats not where we would like to go.
Community is already not so strong and needs support, there is so much work
to do in increasing content, censorship will cripple Indian community if
such a thing happens.

There are many questions that the communities need to decide as to submit
to Indian laws (if at all they come through) and I hope the situation does
not arise for us to take those tough calls.

PS : I would not like to post / join foundation-l myself since it has high
SNR IMO.

-- 
Regards
Srikanth.L
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