[Wikimedia-l] SOPA related bill in Taiwan

[Tilman Bayer]

The EFF reports that this announcement by Taiwanese Wikimedians does
appear to have had an effect:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/taiwanese-users-thwart-government-plans-introduce-internet-blacklist-law

"Taiwanese users were going to stage an Internet black out on Tuesday
June 4th. Several websites, including Wikipedia Taiwan and Mozilla
Taiwan pledged to go dark in order to raise awareness. ... After
several news outlets reported that the new initiative was akin to
mainland China’s “Great Firewall,” the Taiwanese intellectual property
office made an effort to reject the comparison ... In the face of
these criticisms and the planned blackout, the Taiwan Intellectual
Property Office abandoned this severe copyright law."


On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Ted Chien <hsiangtai.chien at gmail.com> wrote:
> My dear colleagues,
>
> Recently on May 21 the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office has announced
> that they will amend the Copyright Act to demand local ISPs to block
> illegal contents on foreign websites, just like the SOPA bill in USA last
> year. For more information, you can read the following news reports:
>
> Focus Taiwan:
> http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aall/201305210035.aspx
>
> ZDNet:
> http://www.zdnet.com/cn/taiwans-copyright-act-amendment-proposal-comes-under-fire-7000015943/
>
> Now there are many Taiwan netizens protesting the bill:
>
> http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/05/26/netizens-fear-copyright-amendment-will-bring-web-filter-system-to-taiwan/
>
> But today we just see an news that TIPO just ignored these protests and
> insist that this bill will not harm the net freedom and rights of general
> users:
>
> http://newtalk.tw/news/2013/05/28/36854.html (it's in Chinese, you may use
> Google translate to read the news.)
>
> Indeed we should protect the copyright, but to ask ISPs to block websites
> is too over-reaction.
>
> We Wikimedia Taiwan is now against the bill and has just released an
> Chinese announcement on our official website to explain why we against the
> bill and ask the government to stop the act:
>
> http://bit.ly/ZbvTX0
>
> We also started an discussion on zh.wp to ask the community if we could put
> the announcement as an global site notice, we even think about blackout
> zh.wp for 24 hours (the date is still in discussion):
>
> http://goo.gl/fXi8g
>
> This is because according to Alexa.com (http://Alexa.com), Wikipedia is now
> the top 10 website in Taiwan. To blackout Wikipedia in Taiwan should get
> the attention of TIPO and has some effects.
>
> My questions are:
>
> * Could we ask for blackout Wikipedia (not just zh.wp) ONLY for Taiwan IP?
> (Some users from China hope this blackout will not effect them)
> * If we could not blackout Wikipedia only for Taiwan IP, could we ask to
> blackout zh.wp? (from what we have discussed on zh.wp, the Chinese
> community has agreed on such blackout, but the date is still on discussion)
> * If we could implement such blackout, how soon it can be done?
> * What suggestions from you that we should do as an local Chapter?
>
> Thanks and Regards,
> Ted Chien
> Chairman
> Wikimedia Taiwan
> --
> Blog: htttp://htchien.tw (http://htchien.tw/)
> Facebook: http://facebook.com/htchien
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/htchien
> LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/htchien
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-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications)
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB