[WikiEN-l] Trading with the Enemy

[Ray Saintonge]

Fred Bauder wrote:

>Editing material which originates in Iran, North Korea, Cuba and other
>nations with which most trade is banned without a government license may be
>illegal. It is interpreted as aiding the enemy. No corrections of spelling
>or grammar would be allowed under this interpretation, only use of camera
>ready copy. Theoretically correcting a spelling mistake by Osama ben Ladin
>would fall into this category of crime.
>
Is this a suggestion that the servers should be moved to a free country?

>This potentially affects us as we can in the routine conduct of business,
>without even knowing, accept imput from these nations, from a user who
>simply appears to be an ordinary user.
>
It would seem absolutely unwiki to discriminate against an individual 
because of his national origin.  The attitude of the U.S. regime against 
his government has nothing to do with how we treat individuals from that 
country.  The flip side of your argument would have all of us outside of 
the United States treat every American individual as though he were an 
unqualified supporter of Bush and his cronies.  I could not in good 
conscience treat every American that I meet in that way, and you woulkd 
do well not to treat individual Iranians, North Koreans or Cubans in 
that way.

That being said, I know of no contributors to the Wikimedia family who 
are from those countries, so the argument may be moot.

>One could interprete this to apply only to input the origin of which is
>clearly identified.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/national/28PUBL.html?th
>
>New York Times login required
>
I have no intention of using the NYT login system.

Ec