media. Reply-To:
What to many appeared to be the abstractest of theory just a few months ago, is now becoming frightful reality :-( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16044554
Kapil Sibal's position seems to be pretty much exactly in line with our projected concept of image filtering (he practically literally uses the term), except he then extends the line all the way into censorship territory, without further scrupules.
If we had already gone ahead with the image filter as projected, we would be snookered by the time Kapil Sibal called our Indian office folks to his office.
With an image filter in place -pretty much exactly to Indian Government specification right off the shelf- there would be no way to argue that such a thing was impossible, difficult, or unconscionable.
We would have either been forced to censor some of our WM projects "You don't have enough image taggers for commons? I'm sure we can provide some", or withdraw from India. Since full-on censorship is intolerable, we would have been forced to withdraw.
Now we (still) have clean hands, and (with a bit of luck) can probably put down a strong(er) argument that can weather any Indian govt attacks on NPOV, should they come. If we are careful, we can likely do so politely and assertively, without hurting too many people's feelings.
(Also: seeing reporting on facebook and twitter activity, and having viewed pages from eg. Hindi Wikipedia, I do not believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for themselves, of course! :-)
sincerely, Kim Bruning