[Advocacy Advisors] agreement and questions (was re: BBC - Russia internet blacklist law takes effect)

[James Salsman]

Dear Stephen:

Thank you for your requests and the information you have been sending.
It is deeply appreciated. I agree with the Italian and Philippines'
protest, and I wonder why the protest in Russia is not much stronger.
What if someone asked Putin about specific instances of blacklist
leakages and the scandals which resulted from those? In any case, I
have several more questions:

Does the Foundation intend to take a position on the Bradley Manning
case? A plea of not guilty for lack of scienter is unavailable in
military court. Does the Foundation support his attempt to enter that
plea? Does the Foundation believe that Manning's likely conclusion
given the evidence available to him was that he was upholding the
spirit of the law while deliberately violating the letter? Does the
Foundation support Manning's motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy
trial?

Will the Foundation please ask the Secretary of Defense to declare
that patents which adversely affect national security including the
security inherent in computer programming education as necessary to
perform computer security audits must be available under reasonable
and non-discriminatory license terms?

Will the Foundation please support pro-education policies such as
class size reduction, pay equality by increased pay for women, tuition
subsidies for gross fixed capital formation, and evaluation of
publication impact by readership as well as reputation?

Will the Foundation please support general devolution of power to
people equally? For example: http://j.mp/amendmentact

Best regards,
James Salsman


On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Stephen LaPorte <slaporte at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The BBC has a story on the law that the Russian Wikipedia community
> protested:
>
> If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers
> (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the
> offending material.
>
> The list of banned website will be managed by Roskomnadzor (Russia's Federal
> Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and
> Mass Communications). It is meant to be updated daily, but its contents are
> not available to the general public.
>
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20096274