[Wikipedia-l] What would Richard Stallman say?

Fri Feb 20 15:03:55 UTC 2004

Gareth Owen wrote:
> Are we to scour the world for the most strict censorship laws 
> in order to comply with those as well?  

I find this entire discussion about copyright laws and censorship to
be puzzling, perhaps because I think I have a valid principle by which
to decide such things.

We ought to obey the laws of as many countries as possible, consistent
with our goal of creating a freely distributable *and* NPOV
encyclopedia.

If the laws of China would ask to do something biased in order to
distribute there, we would refuse.  Our neutrality is something that
we cannot compromise on.

But the decision to be rigorously GNU-free does not generally get in
the way of neutrality.  Restrictive copyright laws that don't let us
have "fair use" don't mean that we can't be neutral.  They just mean
that we have to do some extra work to remain free.

--Jimbo