Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] Repository response to takedown notices

[Mike Gerwitz]

On Fri, Jun 03, 2016 at 16:48:49 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I. roskomnadzor.
>
> github have an poor choice here: they can (of course) refuse to act on
> these requests, but in that case the Russian authorities will probably
> arrange for users in Russia to have no access to github.
>
> This is an obvious tradeoff with no obviously right answer, for
> github.  I don't think it is fair to criticise github for making the
> choice they have made.

Richard Stallman's opinion is that GitHub could have chosen to stand up
to the Russian government.

You are right in that they are in a bad situation---when I described it
to rms, he called it a "hostage situation"; Russia is using their
citizens to demand that GitHub uphold its "tyrannical rule" (quotes
his).  I agree with him: GitHub could have done the right thing,
and---being such a popular service---cause an outcry that might have the
Russian government reconsider.  Instead, they've played along.

The important line from Richard is: "For our conclusions, the only thing
that matters is that GitHub imposes censorship."

> Arguably github are not actually discriminating against any country;
> if they received similar legal requests from the French or British or
> Chinese authorities, I assume they would do the same, if the request
> was backed by the threat of total blockage of github.  Their policy is
> to comply with such takedown notices in order to keep their service
> mostly-available in the relevant country.

Same situation as above.

These criteria are for acceptable hosts for GNU projects; we hope that
others will adopt them and take them into consideration for their own
services, but we cannot possibly endorse a service that might
potentially block users from accessing GNU's software, no matter what
the reason.

> But anywway, it is clear that the definition of C2 needs clarifying,
> at the very least.  And I would argue that the clarification should be
> such that github's choices here fall on the right side of the line.

Richard doesn't want to provide much detail.  If it turns out that this
is frequently questioned, it might be useful to provide some more
information.

But the statement would certainly be that GitHub made the wrong
decision, in our opinion (clearly, otherwise they would have passed the
criterion).

> II. export controls
>
> The link is to [2b].  I see nothing in that page that says github will
> restrict what anyone will do with github for ITAR reasons.

You're right, I don't see a problem (personally) with that link.  I
didn't perform the initial GitHub evaluation, so I'm not sure if there
was any other justification; I can look through some previous
correspondence with the evaluator to see if it was a
misunderstanding/misinterpretation or not.

If all is well, I'll have that link removed.  Thanks for noticing and
pointing it out!

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker+Activist | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer
https://mikegerwitz.com
FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB

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