On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:22:12 +0100, Thomas Morton wrote:
On 9 July 2012 20:41, Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com> wrote:
In less than half an hour Russian Wikipedia will go on one-day
strike
against SOPA/PIPA-like law in Russia [1] (in Russian).
Unless I am missing something key; whilst this is a crappy law, it is
not
much like SOPA/PIPA in that it doesn't seem to threaten the existence
of
Russian Wikipedia.
Comparatively; when some ISPs in the UK blacklisted The Pirate Bay at
the
behest of the government we didn't black Wikipedia out over it.
Ok, let me may be provide a bit of a background.
1) The law is formally directed against child pornography, drug
trafficking, hate between religions etc. The idea is that every website
(whatever it means) where information violating the law has been
discovered will get a one-day notice to remove the info, and if it fails
to do so, the access to the whole website will be blocked by all
providers legally operating in Russia. On paper, nothing in this law
threats Wikipedia and sister projects.
2) There is no political freedom in Russia, and courts are not
independent. Therefore many people are afraid that once the law is in
force (tomorrow it must be voted in the second hearing, and the third
hearing in September is typically automatic) that it may become an
instrument for central and local authorities to shut down access to
internet sites at will claiming they advertise something listed in the
law. Russian Wikipedia is not the only organization which raised such
objections; another is for instance the Presidential Council on Hyman
Rights (the suggestions of this council are typically get ignored
despite its affiliation with the president), or the National
Broadcasters Associations.
3) It is widely expected that the protest is going to be completely
ignored. Indeed, the blackout has been reported in media, with both the
minister of telecommunications and the vice-speaker of parliament
explaining that the law has no threat for Wikipedia, and will not be
amended.
4) The discussion on Russian Wikipedia was initiated yesterday morning
by Stanislav Kozlovsky, the executive director of wm.ru. (He never wrote
anything in his wm.ru role, and I believe the chapter was not involved
in any way). First nothing happened, but in the late evening there was
the blackout suggestion coming. Eventually, around 10pm it was
transferred into a RFC, which was closed at 11pm since the number of
votes for the blackout was clearly exceeding the votes against the
blackout. No attempt was made top analyze the arguments, it was just a
hasty majority decision. From what I know, no consultations with
external parties were held. In contrast to the en.wp blackout, the
mobile version of ru.wp is available now.
Cheers
Yaroslav
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