[Foundation-l] and what if...

[Judson Dunn]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 6:26 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> The censorship issue isn't really an issue - if an image (or content
> or whatever) is genuinely illegal in a given country then of course
> that country has every right to block it. If countries block legal
> images (as in this case), or block more than just the infringing image
> (again, as in this case) then we can appeal by whatever means are
> appropriate (the court of public opinion works pretty well as an
> appeals court if there isn't a more formal method). We can also
> campaign to have laws changed if we want to, but that's a decision to
> be taken with great care - getting into political lobbying is a big
> deal and maybe not something we want to get involved with (if we do,
> it should be something done by the local chapter, I expect).
>


I agree, I would be very opposed to the Foundation using its resources
to openly plan for censorship in a technological way. Obviously it
doesn't hurt to plan from a PR and legal point of view.

I would not want a new group to think, while they are deciding to
censor, that Wikimedia has made this easy, and has ensured that their
censorship will effect the least amount of people and result in the
least political backlash.

I understand that some countries may decide to censor content. That is
regrettable. I don't however want any of the money I donate to the
Foundation to go to making these blocks easier for the people
implementing them, or less prone to error. It is very likely that each
censorship implementation will be different, researching each one, and
deciding how to cause the least impact preemptively I don't think is a
good use of resources for the technical team.

Not a response to your email, but the reaction in general strikes me
as very inconsistent. With China they have been censored, they try and
use TOR, and we block them, and say for years that there is
regrettably nothing we can do about this situation. UK gets blocked
for a day and we are talking about changing our IP based block
systems? I know the technical details of the block are a little
different, but not *that* different. Maybe the people that are saying
this though have always opposed this system, and this is just more
reason in their minds. I hope that's the case. :)

Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion