[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) partner to provide access to Wikipedia free of mobile data charges in the Middle East

[Yann Forget]

2012/10/16 Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Yann Forget <yannfo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> This announcement is worrying, to say the least.
>> In other words, the Wikimedia Foundation is doing a partnership with
>> one of the most retrograde government, which is also a regular censor
>> on Internet content.
>> How could you justify that?
>
> Hi Yann
>
> It's not a partnership with the government, it's with a telecom company to

Well, this telecom company is the arm of the government to impose
censorship in KSA.
This is a poor excuse. In creating such a partnership, WMF is
implicitely supporting the censorship by providing a moral caution,
even if it is not directly involved in censorship.

Yann

> allow its subscriber in KSA (MENA region), free and easy access to
> Wikipedia. KSA is a big part of the middle-east region, the political
> reasons aside this helps the public get better access to Wikipedia. There
> is no reason why we should not increase availability for the general public.
>
> I'm not sure about the stance against this either, if a government is
> trying to censor and restrict access, we should do what? not help provide
> access to their citizens, not increase availability? how would that help
> the situation? This is a way of working with the current situation and
> perhaps around it, its about providing free access to people in the region,
> which is probably the best thing to do at the time.
>
> Regards
> Theo
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