[Foundation-l] and what if...

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2008/12/12 Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:

> We all perfectly know that if this particular image was borderline,
> there are images or texts that are illegal in certain countries. I am
> not even speaking of China here, but good old westernish countries.
> In some countries, it may be sexually-oriented picts. In others, it may
> be violence. In others yet, some texts we host are forbidden. I am not
> going to cite any examples publicly ;-)

Well in fact the picture blocked by IWF was not illegal. I think we
should complain that such the organisation like IWF should follow the
freedom of speach rules of their countries, which means that they
cannot legally block the content which has not been found illegal. We
should also join and actively participate in campaings attempting to
control IWF and similar organisations. This is not only Wikimedia
issue - but generally an issue of freedom of speach, which might
affect not only us but also many others.

> Now, seriously, what is more important right now ?
> That citizens can not read one article ?
> Or that all the citizens of a country can not edit all articles any more ?

Well, the story with IWF have shown that the current system of
blocking vandals by their IP has to be changed ASAP. In fact it is
causing a lot of problems even without action of IWF and other similar
wachdogs. There are more and more ISPs which uses single IP for all
their customers. Do you rember the story of blocking Quatar? Actually,
vast majority of ISPs use dynamic IP numbers, which also causes
serious problems with effective blocking vandals.My current ISP is
using dynamic IP. In my office there are around 200 people using
single IP. I guess all OTRS volunteers and checkusers knows the issue
very well. The IP blocking is terribly old fashioned - it has been
implemented at the time where most of the IP's represented single
PC's. Actually very few IP numbers are "personal".


> However, editing can only be done on our site, so the impact of blocking
> in editing is quite dramatic.

Yes.. but it is at least in 50% our own fault - by using mechanism of
IP blocking.

> And... beyond UK, what do we know about the censorship-systems the
> countries are setting into place ? I understood that Australia was
> setting up the same system than UK, but that France was rather thinking
> of other system. Should not we get to know and understand better what
> governments are planning ? Should we try to lobby them to adopt certains
> choices or not ? Should we help them adopt wise practices ?
>

Yes.. for sure we had to monitor the situation and give a laud voice
demanding formal control of the bodies similar to IWF and support
local groups which are demanding the same.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html