[Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

Mon Jul 31 05:49:28 UTC 2006

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>  
>
>>If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely 
>>sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. 
>>control zones backups
>>    
>>
>
>And what I'm telling you is that "out of U.S. control zones" are 
>essentially North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe.  If the U.S. govt 
>were to close down the Wikimedia Foundation, then a backup in 
>Sweden would not help you one bit.  Libya will not help you, 
>because Khadaffi is far to eager to improve relations to the 
>western world.  That is, in a fight between you and the U.S. Govt, 
>Khadaffi would side with the later.
>
>Venezuela's Chavez might want to help you, but will he be able to?
>
>You better start building that fort near Waco. You're on your own.
>
>
>  
>
What fort?   I have been primarily talking about reliability, 
robustness, cutover load management.

Others seem paranoid we cannot find a way to reliably comply with U.S. 
law regarding copyright, slander, etc.

I agree in a "fight" with the U.S. government they can take down servers 
wordwide, by cruise missile or smart bomb if necessary.   It merely 
seems a bit harder to come up with discrete excuses unnoticed by the 
public worldwide if the servers are distributed.

As I recall when Reagan bombed Libya's Kaddafi we (the U.S.) lost a B-1 
at sea partially because France refused overflight rights during the attack.

How about Australia?   U.S. Warships are not allowed port call 
priveleges there unless U.S.G. certifies it has no nuclear munitions on 
board.

More seriously I had not noticed that U.S. influence was so pervasive 
and reliable.

I think some distributed server installations would go a long way 
towards reducing capricious or questionable action from U.S. courts.    
Further I would think it would take some time for U.S. influence to shut 
down all other servers.   Time that would allow proper appeals to U.S. 
Appellate Courts or even the Supreme Court while the material was still 
available from other servers.

We could call this the lightening bug strategy.    One server goes down 
and another one lights up.

Anyway.  It is not my problem at all.  It is the WMF Board or Trustees 
responsibility to figure out what the WMF owes contributors and users 
worldwide.

I merely found the technical problem of guaranteeing world wide data 
access after an Altantic tsanami or Cat 6 hurricane washed over Florida 
a bit interesting.

regards,
lazyquasar