On Sat, 13 May 2006 11:22:25 +0100, you wrote: Illegal, maybe, but in the case of suppression of information critical of the government, definitely not immoral. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

I agree with Timwi, encouraging Chinese citizens to break the laws of their country is probably not the right thing to do, even though such forms of censorship seem unfair. Also, what if the Chinese authorities manage to track down those who break their censorship laws? Let us not forget what the government does to "dissidents" in China. And what is the press gets hold of this? The issue of Wikipedia and Chinese Government censorship has been in the news. If we start encouraging Chinese Wikipedians to break the law, it will only mean bad publicity for the Foundation.

Actually I believe it was you who brought this up on the mailing list Anthony,although I do agree that this is not a matter which is within the scope of this list. I must however mention here that you claim the Chinese citizens are being *oppressed* by their Governemnt. I, personally, also feel the same way, but then let us not forget that these policies are put in place by an elected Government-perhaps for legitimate reasons- and the said laws are a part of China's internal affairs. So for us to pass judgement on this matter would not be entirely fair-since we are both citizens of other countries.

On 5/13/06, Prasad J <prasad59(a)gmail.com> wrote: Were the US government to put into place certain policies "protecting" its citizens from certain information on the Internet, no doubt you'd start complaining about jackbooted thugs and the like. I don't particularly care what you think about the US government, but I don't think the Chinese government should escape similar condemnation because of an accident of geography.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Prasad J stated for the record: And there you have a wonderful summary of the difference in attitudes often seen between Americans and those who did not build their country on the violent overthrow of established government. I, in apparent contrast to Prasad, believe that whenever any form of government -- whether elected or not -- becomes destructive of its people's unalienable rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. - -- Sean Barrett | Careful. We don't want to sean(a)epoptic.com | learn from this. --Calvin

Prasad J stated for the record: I am very familiar with the process through which India achieved independence from Britain. Note that India was a set of independent nations that were conquered by Britain that then unified and threw Britain out ... and a good job it was, too. The United States, however, were created as colonies by Britain, then rebelled against their own countrymen -- not against a foreign conquerer. I suggest that that difference is what gives you the tendency to say that government should be obeyed even when it is killing you and for me to say that government should be overthrown early and often. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed -- which necessarily implies that the governed can withdraw that consent. See also [[Mandate of Heaven]]. -- Sean Barrett | There are four boxes to use in the defense sean(a)epoptic.com | of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. | Use in that order. --Ed Howdershelt.

Prasad J wrote: Your inconsistencies are showing. While Gandhi quite rightly supported non-violence, he also was willing to resist with illegal acts. He often engaged in peaceful but illegal marches. It was also illegal for him to encourage Indians to produce their own salt without paying the required British taxes. In a previous message you referred to the section of the Indian Penal Code which criminalized homosexual behaviour. Certainly two loving people who set out to violate that unjust law are well within the nonviolent principles that were preached by Gandhi. Ec

On 5/13/06, Prasad J <prasad59(a)gmail.com> wrote: the situation. Maybe the International Human Rights Commission is, but if so they obviously can't solve the problem alone. Again let me note that the fact that the Government of China is elected does not make one bit of difference in my opinion. Even the majority of people living in a geographic location does not have the right to oppress. Sure, it's abetting a crime, pretty much by definition. However, it is my opinion that abetting such a crime as spreading truthful information is perfectly just. In fact, I consider it my duty to abet this crime. The US government is itself funding people to "help Chinese users access blocked sites." So the very government which claims me as a citizen is abetting a crime. "This isn't the first time that Anonymizer has looked for ways to beat Chinese censors. A couple of years ago, the company was hired by the Voice of America (VoA) to develop software to help Chinese users access blocked sites. Anonymizer is now working with the VoA on a similar project for Internet users in Iran." http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125303,00.asp "The Voice of America (VOA) is the official international broadcasting service of the Government of the United States. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_america Anthony

On 5/13/06, Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote: Also see [[Elections in the People's Republic of China]]. The second paragraph is especially relevant. (Not that I think that democracy permits oppression anyway.) Anthony

Also, let us not forget the Wikimedia Foundation is based in the U.S, and though it may international in it's scope, the general perception is that Wikimedia is an American organization. Wikipedia and the Foundation have been receiving quite an ampunt of media-attention of late and an issue like this is unlikely to go unnoticed. This is already a time when most of the world accuses the U.S of meddling in other nations's affairs too much, and like it or not anti-Americanism is gaining support world over (not only in Muslim nations but also in Europe,Asia and else-where). At such a juncture if Wikimedia tries to help Chinese people break the law, the press is hardly likely to portray Wikimedia as "saviour of the oppressed". Infact the Foundation is probably going to be portrayed as a propaganda tool used by the U.S Governement to further the latter's geo-political objectives in China,Iran and the like. Needless to say such accusation are far from good-news for the Foundation.

As, I said by allowing Chinese Wikipedians (who are probably just kids who aren't aware of what exactly their government does to "dissidents") will do them more harm than good. You wouldn't be breaking any laws, you would just be getting some Chinese teenager shot for being a "traitor". America tried to bring democracy to Iraq and only succeeded in instigating a civil war.Americans were not put on this planet for the express purpose of preserving democracy-why don't you give it a rest for a while?

Prasad J wrote There are good reasons why this list is dedicated to improving the English Wikipedia. Rather than the world situation in general. The main purpose of Wikipedia can be defined as a (new) kind of publishing, namely putting high quality and informative and neutral, factual articles into the public domain, under the GFDL. That is what we do. This is not propaganda. If it is difficult for people to read them online, there are other ways they can be distributed, such as on a CD-ROM. It is essentially pointless for governments to try to prevent people having some sort of access to Wikipedia, short of running the country on the lines of North Korea. I suggest we get back to editing, so that if people have extra difficulty in accessing the English Wikipedia, for any reason, it will be all the more worth reading in the end. Charles

charles matthews wrote: That's what Wikipedia pretends to do according to the policies. I've believed that myself until I've found out, that administrators block editors they disagree with. -- Raphael

charles matthews wrote: I think, that you missunderstand me. I'm not claiming, that I've found an article, which is propagandistic. That would indeed only prove, that Wikipedia is not finished. What I've found is, that administrators abuse their priviledges to have a final say in content disputes. This is a systematic flaw in the Wikipedia, which is excused by accusing the opposition of Wikilaywering or by claiming to follow the policies "in spirit". The policies are great, but there is not seperation of powers in Wikipedia, and power corrupts even in reputed "open" systems like Wikipedia. -- Raphael

On 5/13/06, Prasad J <prasad59(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think it's more than that, but I'm not saying I agree with everything the VoA does. "America" is not a single entity. The Voice of America tends to be at least somewhat independent from Bush and the top level government executives. The fact that they contracted with Anonymizer, Inc. only serves to enhance that independence for this particular action. And I've agreed with this. I don't believe that conditions have to be unliveable in order to justify facilitation of civil disobedience. I believe they did. I don't believe it was justified, of course. Anthony

On 5/13/06, Tim Starling <t.starling(a)physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote: Even more confusing is Singapore - according to what I read on the wikipedia article recently, this is the first election since the eighties that hasn't been won by *default* - in most, more than half the seats were uncontested. And in this one, they won by something like 88 out of 92 seats. Now that is a situation to confuse any democracy supporter. Steve

Rob wrote: Some factions in the US government would be very keen to "protect" citizens. You begin with obvious topics like suppressing kiddie-porn, and lever things up from there. There's a big fat middle ground of the population who are willing to allow responsibility to be dictated by fear just to make sure that any criminality is suppressed; they feel no obligations to protect other minorities from friendly fire. Ec

Like I said, the Chinese government probably has it's reasons for doing what it does. And even if you do bring down this firewall-do you really think the government will just admit defeat? As for 1989, could the U.S or any other nation do anything during the Tien-a-mien massacre? No. Because each country has the right to manage it's own affairs-even if that may see unfair to us.Countries don't go out of their way to help each other without there being something for them to gain The U.S is not trying to bring democracy to China in the interest of goodwill, the former has major geo-political interests in two emerging powers (China and India) the Americans are just trying to achieve their longterm goals by bringing about a change in the Chinese government so that when the U.S tries to better it's ties with that nation, it will not be accused of supporting the oppressive Peoples' Government. If indeed America wanted to rescue the oppressed why did it turn a blind eye to Tibet and (more importantly) the Rwandan genocide? Please do not be taken in when the VoA and other agencies try to de-stabilize (which is in a way what this will do) the government in the (apparent) intention of delivering the Chinese from oppression. Anyway, even if you do bring down the firewall, they will probably have it up again in a jiffy-(the government is hardly likely to concede defeat to the Foundation) then would not your efforts have gone to waste?

On 14/05/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Incase you are not aware of this Anglo-German relations were hostile at the time-what with Hitler promising to conquer Britain and all. Even otherwise, in 1939 the U.K did not declare war UNTIL the 3rd of September, when Hitler launched a blitzkreig on France. It was at this point that England realised that the Nazis were seriously intent on conquering England. Only when it became clear that Hitler was going to invade England after France fell (which was pretty obvious), did the U.K declare war on Germany. It must be noted here that upto that point of time Britain had been following a "policy of appeasement" allowing Hitler to attack and conquer Austria, and Mussolini to invade Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) to deter the fascist leaders from concentrating their efforts on Britain. Britain did not wage war on Germany till the former realised that war was, in fact, inevitable. Thus, the U.K's actions were by no means well-intentioned. Also while we're talking about Britain, I hope you know the atrocities committed by that country in it's colonies-have you heard of the Jallianwallah Bagh Massacre?Or the Andaman Cellular Jail? Verify your facts before putting them forward.As for the battle of Vienna, The Polish King had been made the Commander-in-Chief of the Christian forces (if I may call it that). So naturally Poland would have to take part.And diplomacy in it's present form did not exist in the 17th century (when marriages between empires were the only forms of "treaties). Show me MODERN examples-i.e in the last 100-150 years. First we have no links to the US goverment. Secondly we are

Britain did not "like" Germany but as I explained war was inevitable. It was only a question of which country made the first move-this country would also perhaps have the advantage of being the first to act. This much was obvious from Hitler's actions. And I urge you to re-read your history book, Germany declared war on France in 1939 itself. And if Britain really wanted to help countries threatend by the Nazis, why didn't the U.K intervene when Hitler attacked Austria, or for that matter when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia? Britain had many colonies in Africa, they could have helped the Abyssinians if they wanted to. Answer these two questions. Secondly as I stated the Battle of Vienna does not count as an example since at that time diplomacy (in it's present form) was not existent. As for the "logical fallacies" you foynd when I highlighted the atrocities committed by the U.K in India to advance the Crown's agendas there, I will not honour your "objection" with a reply. Although no U.S laws may be broken as a result of this act there are international laws in place to regulate internet-related issues. PS-What does skin colour have to do with it? As a side-note (unrelated to this discussion) can you name one (active) Arb Com member who is South Asian-as in of Indo-Aryan descent?Or an Arbitrator who is Muslim?No offence but I am pretty sure there are South-Asian and Muslim editors out there. Only none of them will be voted into ArbCom. This is not to say the present Arbitrators are not fair-I've interacted with one of them so I know they are. Just making an interesting observation.

You are delibrately refusing to understand the arguements put forth by me in an effort to "win" this "debate". You have an incredibly idealistic view of world politics, and do not seem to comprehend what diplomacy is about. I suggest once again that you brush up on your history so as to be convinced that Britain (definitely) has not done anything for another nation without a hidden agenda favouring the British Crown. As for my "logical fallacies", you may engage me in your trivial wordplay but I hope you realise that the atrocities committed by the British on the Indian freedom-fighters (who, followed a path of non-violence) will serve as a reminder to coming generations of the lengths to which the English were ready to go in order to secure their political objectives. In today's world, it is probably the U.S which is following this policy of "power and influence at all costs" The attempts to encourage subversive movements in China in order to spread capitalist U.S propaganda in that country (in the name of intellectual freedom) are only evidence of this. Again, Geni your statement "...like most of the world they (Britain) weren't bothered about the rights of Africans" casts light on the Caucasian belief in their superiority over other races and even over the Asian-Aryans-who are basically of the same race as Nordic people (the "harrenvolk). You yourself have conceded that the U.K would help Poland (which was a Causasian country, in close proximity to England), but not Abyssinia. This proves that England's help was (at the least) racist in nature. I rest my case.

Once again, you have avoided the issue? Also, what you were doing (twisting my words to make them appear like admissions of logical fallacies) IS trivial wordplay. Also am I to assume you have no comments to make on the racist policies adopted by the British Government?

Yes, it is relevant to the original issue. Britain had racist reasons for helping Poland whilst ignoring the plight of Abyssinia which proves my point that countries do not help each other out without having hidden agendas or atleast that they do not do so with genuine fraternal compassion. America has an ulterior motive for wanting to help would-be dissidents from China circumvent this firewall. So, having said that I do not think Wikipedia should go by what the VoA or other American agencies say/do-again it is mainly the U.S which seems to be bothered to a great extent by this issue. Do you see the relevance "Angrezi saheb"?

On 5/14/06, Prasad J <prasad59(a)gmail.com> wrote: I did. Wikimedia has nothing to do with this. It's just something done by a group of individuals. Of course, I agree with the other answer as well. I don't particularly care about how the media portrays Wikipedia.

Prasad J wrote: Including Sudan? Tibet is a part of China because it was given to them by the British after WWI to keep it out of the hands of the Russians. The British have profitted greatly by giving away what nevr belonged to them. It's a trick they learned from Napoleon. Rwanda has no strategic importance. Ec

On 5/14/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Is the Foundation making a statement on the copying of Wikipedia's material (presumably in breach of the GFDL) by Baidupedia? Or did I miss it already? Steve

On 5/14/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: I hope so, too, though it seems even less likely now that local corporate interests (Baidu.com) are involved as well. There are at least three things we can also do which, I hope, are relatively uncontroversial. a) There are NPOV pages on Wikipedia and Wikibooks about Internet censorship and the "Great Firewall" in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_mainland_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advice_to_Tor_users_in_China http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Transwiki:Bypassing_the_Great_Firewall_of_China Improving this information and keeping it up to date almost certainly guarantees its (read-only) availability due to its free content nature, at least against origin-based filters. b) Improving our mechanisms of authentication and authorization will, as a side-effect, allow any user of Tor or similar anonymization tools to go through a process of creating a trusted account (which might be upgraded in several steps) for editing. This will be especially relevant when we have single login, and moreover, when we start federating our authentication system with other websites. The process could consist of a new user first having to chat with a human to get permanent editable access, or having to go through a captcha-like process. The user would be pseudonymous, and the pseudonymous identity would be protected by whatever tool they use. This is by no means limited to China or even to the problem of censorship. Selective authorization of trusted users within a non-trusted group is equally applicable, for instance, to the problem of vandalism from school IPs. c) If the new Chinese fork by Baidu.com changes GFDL content, whether they like it or not, we are legally allowed to incorporate their improvements into the Chinese Wikipedia (provided that Baidu or the contributors have the exclusive rights to the content in the first place). This situation is not entirely dissimilar to the Spanish Wikipedia fork "Enciclopedia Libre" which, for some time, was quite successful. At the time, I was told that Spanish Wikipedians were actively copying over improvements. I hope the same will happen on zh.wikipedia.org. - Now, if we do all this, there's one additional little step we could take. As noted above, the fact that Wikipedia is free content itself helps to guarantee the availability of the text. So, while China's Wikipedia block is bad, I think in the long run it primarily hurts editors, not readers, who will hopefully find mirrors of the content. Now imagine most mirror copies of Wikipedia content carried a notice like this (in the applicable language): "The Wikipedia article ''Galileo Galilei'' is licensed under the [[GNU Free Documentation License]] (see [[history]]). The [[latest, openly editable version]] of the article is located on Wikipedia. If you cannot access or edit Wikipedia, please see the [[Wikimedia Content Access Guidelines]]." [*] This last link would point to a locally hosted copy of a file which explains various issues, including prominent information about accessing Wikipedia through any kind of filter, and about setting up a trusted account for editing as described under b) above. Getting these guidelines included by mirrors could, perhaps, be accomplished by attaching a footer like this to our database and HTML dumps. It would be clear that these guidelines exist not for political reasons, but as a matter of providing and protecting access to knowledge. It seems to me that giving a child in Africa a free encyclopedia or textbook is, inherently, based on the same motivation as giving a child in the PRC access to our knowledge and learning resources, to wit: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." To me, this easily translates to: "We don't care who you are or where you live. If you cannot read or edit Wikipedia, we will help you." Far from an all-out campaign against censorship (which I support separately, but not necessarily wtihin Wikimedia), it would be a small step to try to better inform those who cannot otherwise contribute, and who are aware of the risks. Erik [*] Anthony, you don't need to tell me about the literal requirements of the GFDL. :-)

Timwi wrote: Just because something is illegal does not mean that it is wrong; it is merely contrary to the intentions of the state. Getting around copy protect devices on CDs may be illegal, but it's not wrong. Providing information on how to circumvent laws is not in itself immoral. What would be immoral would be failing to alert the potential user that using this information may be illegal for him. Only when he knows about the laws can he make an informed choice about going ahead. Ec