Actually some parties might bring EU to low standards of freedom of expression. For what concerns Wikimedia, I fear more lobbying about copyright related legislation or about net neutrality than USA turning into a dictatorship. I'm not afraid of a complete service disruption but instead of things getting more and more complicate in a globalized World being broken up. We rely upon a level of freedom to move people and data (mainly among the two shorelines of the Atlantic ocean) which has no precedents in human history. Offline backups -to renew on yearly basis- are not so expensive to be physically sent to chapters, or at least a certain number of chapters meeting some requirements (e.g. a physical location, some IT, etc.). It would instead be *hard* to rebuild an infrastructure almost from the scratch. What puzzles me is our ability to nullify impact of end of USA safe harbor or (possible) or, for example, Netherlands ceasing net neutrality (currently almost impossible) or similar kind of changes in any Country, which doesn't imply dictatorship but still will have a significantly impact over our operations.
Vito
2017-01-28 13:07 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com:
Hi Nathan,
You describe what I tried to say: threats to the environment in what Wikimedia operates.
In the Netherlands there has been a government based on populism (with Geert Wilders) but the effects were very limited. The same in other EU countries. Political parties and political leaders in Europe are aware of the world wars that took place and are not out of the minds, so extremes are much less extreme. Even in comparison with the US now less extreme.
Like the archives of Alexandria got lost due being stored in one place, let us not make that mistake again. Whatever the cause of troubles is, nature, humans, fire, etc.
To me the most safe option would be to have a back up at every continent, thus the risks are spread.
Romaine
Op zaterdag 28 januari 2017 heeft Nathan nawrich@gmail.com het volgende geschreven:
Romaine makes some good points. There is a legitimate concern that the
turn
to populism and unpredictability threatens the environment in which Wikimedia operates, and its only reasonable to consider a move of core assets somewhere safer from the unspooling of Western social fabric. Perhaps the Netherlands is a good alternative, although Geert Wilders is quite popular there... The United Kingdom, perhaps? Yet with Brexit and UKIP, one wonders how safe Wikimedia would be there. Perhaps France, if
not
for Marine Le Pen... This is more challenging than I expected. Where will we find some place that is protected from the pernicious threats that
beset
the Wikimedia Foundation in the United States?
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 10:33 PM, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki@gmail.com javascript:;> wrote:
Today I was reading in the (international) news about websites with knowledge on the topic of climate change disappear from the internet as result of the Trump administration. The second thing I read is that
before
something can be published about this topic, the government needs to approve this.
Do you realise what the right word for this is? censorship. Even if it is only partially.
Luckily there are many scientists working on getting all the data
abroad,
out of the US to ensure the research data is saved, including on
servers
in
the Netherlands where Trump (hopefully) has no reach.
In the past week I was reading about the Internet Archive organisation,
who
is making a back up in Canada because of the Trump administration. I
did
not understood this, you may call me naive, but now I do understand, apparently they have some visionary people at the Internet Archive.
I miss a good answer to this situation from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Trump is now promoting harassment and disrespect, already for some
time,
What signal is given to the rest of the world if an America based organisation is spreading the thought of a harassment free Wikipedia
and
the free word, while the president of the US is promoting harassment, disrespect and censorship on a massive scale.
This is just the first week of this president!
I am 100% sure everyone in the Wikimedia movement is willing to make
sure
Wikimedia faces no damage whatsoever, including in WMF, but to me this still starts to get concerning.
If we as Wikimedia movement think that free knowledge, free speech,
freedom
of information, etc are important, I would think that the location
where
the organisation is based is that country where liberty is the
largest, I
do not know where this is but it is definitely not the US.
To my impression WMF is stuck in the US, so I do not believe they would actually move when the danger grows.
But I think it is possible to make sure risks are spread over the
world.
Certainly as we are an international movement that intends to cover the knowledge of the whole humanoid civilisation.
To come to a conclusion, I think WMF and the Wikimedia movement should think about a back-up plan if it actually goes wrong.
If you do not agree with me: that is perfectly fine, that's your right
and
should be protected.
Thank you.
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