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

Tue Dec 6 15:37:24 UTC 2011

On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 09:25:03PM +0530, Achal Prabhala wrote:
> On Tuesday 06 December 2011 08:27 PM, Kim Bruning wrote:
> > I do not  believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil
> > Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for
> > themselves, of course! :-)
> They have:
> 
> http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.aspx?ddm=10&pid=2664
> 
> and Mr Sibal's passing thought of yesterday is probably not going anywhere.

And hurrah for that!  :-) 

My absolute nightmare scenario, of course, is that (the next) Mr Sibal calls Twitter,
Facebook, Google, ..., and Wikimedia   into his (or her) office; and that they all
mutter and hem and haw, except us. We would go "Sir, yes sir! All ready to go sir!".
This would leave the other "web 2.0" parties in a politically untenable position. 

It is my absolute belief that -without intervention- this scenario could happen and,
in fact, could have already happened. We have the resources, we have the technology,
but (fortunately) we haven't reached consensus on applying them in this manner, yet.

Wikimedia needs to be neutral, and rightly so, imo. However -in terms of essential
infrastructure, copyright and freedom of speech- we do have certain requirements. If
our supporting ecosystem does not meet those requirements, we fail to thrive.

Therefore, these essential items do require careful attention from social, financial,
technical *and* (unfortunately) political angles.

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

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