On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
This announcement is worrying, to say the least. In other words, the Wikimedia Foundation is doing a partnership with one of the most retrograde government, which is also a regular censor on Internet content. How could you justify that?
Hi Yann
It's not a partnership with the government, it's with a telecom company to allow its subscriber in KSA (MENA region), free and easy access to Wikipedia. KSA is a big part of the middle-east region, the political reasons aside this helps the public get better access to Wikipedia. There is no reason why we should not increase availability for the general public.
I'm not sure about the stance against this either, if a government is trying to censor and restrict access, we should do what? not help provide access to their citizens, not increase availability? how would that help the situation? This is a way of working with the current situation and perhaps around it, its about providing free access to people in the region, which is probably the best thing to do at the time.
Regards Theo