[Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to Censor social

Tue Dec 6 14:57:24 UTC 2011

media.
Reply-To: 

What to many appeared to be the abstractest of theory just
a few months ago, is now becoming frightful reality :-(
	http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-16044554

Kapil Sibal's position seems to be pretty much exactly in
line with our projected concept of image filtering (he
practically literally uses the term), except he then
extends the line all the way into censorship territory,
without further scrupules.

If we had already gone ahead with the image filter as
projected, we would be snookered by the time Kapil
Sibal called our Indian office folks to his office. 

With an image filter in place -pretty much exactly to
Indian Government specification right off the shelf-  there
would be no way to argue that such a thing was impossible,
difficult, or unconscionable. 

We would have either been forced to censor some of our  WM
projects "You don't have enough image taggers for commons?
I'm sure we can provide some", or withdraw from India.
Since full-on censorship is intolerable, we would have been
forced to withdraw. 

Now we (still) have clean hands, and (with a bit of luck) can
probably put down a strong(er) argument that can weather
any Indian govt attacks on NPOV, should they come. If we
are careful, we can likely do so politely and assertively,
without hurting too many people's feelings. 

(Also: seeing reporting on facebook and twitter activity, and
having viewed pages from eg. Hindi Wikipedia, I do not
believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil
Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for
themselves, of course! :-)

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

-- 