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Why French Govt's Attempt to Censor Wikipedia Matters
In the end, the Streisand Effect prevailed, as you might expect, when a French domestic intelligence agency apparently browbeat a French citizen into removing content from Wikipedia. The attention caused the Wikipedia entry on a formerly obscure military radio site (English version) to leap in popularity not only in French, but in languages where it was formerly far less likely to have been noticed at all. Lauren Weinstein makes the case, though, that this sort of move isn't just something to shrug at or assume will always end so nicely. "Even though attempts at Internet censorship will almost all fail in the end, governments and authorities have the capability to make groups' and individuals' lives extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even terminated — in the process of attempts at censorship, and equally important, by instilling fear to encourage self-censorship in the first place."
A lie can make its way around the world before the truth can get its boots on. In our pre-distopia state, we're still dealing with Governments that think that blocking something is the best way to make it disappear. It won't be long though until they figure out that telling people lies that they want to believe is a far more effective way of burying the truth than redacting it. So enjoy the dumb governments, corporations, and political groups for as long as you can - because when your generation gets into the control seat, the bullshit isn't going to smell like bullshit, it's going to look and taste like sugar or bacon (choose appropriate tasty thing)
"Even though attempts at Internet censorship will almost all fail in the end, governments and authorities have the capability to make groups' and individuals' lives extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even terminated — in the process of attempts at censorship, and equally important, by instilling fear to encourage self-censorship in the first place."
Wikileaks comes to my mind
Wikipedia is almost nothing without contributors, and french government can put a heavy presure on french contributors. What wil be the result if each government acts the same way ?
France and Russia are very different states indeed, but it's interesting that Russian Wikipedia had a similar incident recently. The Russian Wikimedia received a request from the government to remove the 'Cannabis smoking' article from Russian Wikipedia (see google-translated version). The request in an ultimate manner states that if the article won't be removed during 24 hours then 'the hosting provider is obliged to limit access to such website' (haha, hosting provider from USA?) and if the hosting provider refuses to do that, then 'the IP address of the website will be listed in a database of addresses to whish ISP's will limit access'. The request PDF is here.
Wikipedia is almost nothing without contributors, and french government can put a heavy presure on french contributors.
What wil be the result if each government acts the same way ?
This is the core problem in this case. If the French government, or in deed any government outside the US, wanted to go after Wikipedia, they would find that for all the Wikimedia Foundation is not a money making machine, there are plenty of legally trained people willing to leap to its defence. Plus it would be a great bit of American flag-waving, with the forces of Goodness, Truth and The American Way protecting US Citizens from the corrupt/socialist/communist/feminist/European/Chinese/Arab/terrorist/non-Hollywood/pirate/non-Christian (delete as appropriate) evils.
If the US government wants to shut it down, one call from any number of unaccountable officials in shadowy agencies could pretty much bury the whole thing.
On the other hand, if a government wants to go after the contributors, they are much less likely to have any legal training, backup or knowledge of how the law works, and a couple of big guys with official-looking badges suddenly become very effective at getting the contributor censored.
There was this boat in New Zealand that pissed the French off that one time...
Let me quote from a blog post that paints an even darker picture than the original story I submitted on /.
DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. [...]
This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable [...]
Can you imagine the pressure they put this volunteer through? Threatening him with five years of prison if he does not immediately comply and delete the article in the intelligence agency's offices? You think that doesn't matter?
He's a he, not a she (Lauren, not Laura). It seems he's well enough known to warrant a Wikipedia entry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Weinstein_(technologist).
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
In Russia Wikipedia is giving up to the political pressure to remove or edit a page on Cannabis smoking (Russian version of the page).
I can't fully understand what exactly on that page provoked the government reaction, but apparently there are a number of pages that the Russian gov't is set against (suicide, methamphetamine, bong, amphetamine, The Complete Manual of Suicide - the page on a Japanese book).
In any case, the Russian government is engaged in censorship against Internet sites and other "extremist" materials, which include books, articles, music, images, etc.
Apparently too many people around the world just can't come to grips with the fact that trying to stop proliferation of information on the Net is a stupid idea, but hey, laws don't have to be intelligent. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for survival, apparently it's also not a prerequisite for governing.
You can't handle the truth.
If the US government wants to shut Wikipedia down then they would have to shut down a rather large number of replica sites as well, the content is backed up all over the world in many cases outside the control of the USofA ....
They could fairly quickly kill the master site (to huge protest around the world) but the content would be safe elsewhere ...
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