[Foundation-l] and what if...

[Todd Allen]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:52 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I can not help reflect further on the whole Virgin Killer story.
>
> Whilst I am very happy of the final outcome, and thank David Gerard and
> WMF for having handled that very well, I feel also a big disatisfied by
> the way we acknowledged what happen and discuss future steps.
>
> 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 ;-)
>
> Until now, we have blinded ourselves in claiming that
> * we do not really need to respect local countries law. We respect by
> default the law of the country where projects are hosted (USA)
> * if a country is not happy with some of the content, they can bring the
> affair in front of a local tribunal. Then it will have to go in front of
> an international tribunal. This will last 5 years at least. Good for us.
> * if a legal decision forbid us to show a certain article or a certain
> image, we'll implement a system to block showing the images or text in a
> certain country.
>
> And that was it !
>
> Now, the fact is that we see that other mecanisms can work much better
> than the legal route. It is sufficient that a Foundation, privately
> funded by ISP, establish a black list, for the image/text to be not
> accessible. And on top of that, in a few hours, for most of the citizens
> of this country to be blocked from editing.
>
> 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 ?
>
> I would argue that the content of Wikipedia can be copied and
> distributed by anyone, so preventing reading our site is not such a bid
> deal.
> However, editing can only be done on our site, so the impact of blocking
> in editing is quite dramatic.
>
> My point is not to bend on local laws at all.
> But I'd like to see people change their minds about the traditional
> route we used to think we could be blocked in "democratic" countries
> (legal route, with local then international tribunal).
> And I'd like to see people think about the "worst cases", and then work
> on how to decrease the impact (or prevent entirely) these worst cases.
> Scenario planning in short.
>
> If tomorrow, a really illegal-in-UK image is reported to the IWF, they
> will block it for real. And they will block again editing. Is that a
> concern ? Can it happen again ? What's the risk of it happening again ?
> If it does, what do we do ? Which discussions should we start to avoid
> the entire edit-blocking again ?
>
> 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 ?
>
> Or should we just wait to see what's next ?
>
> Ant
>
>
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Any society considering a Great Firewall of any sort is neither
democratic nor open, whether or not they periodically hold votes on
exactly who should implement bad ideas. We should not in any way
acknowledge or respect such, though we should help those who live
there and encourage and assist them in circumvention.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.