[Repo-criteria-discuss] Resolving the C2 question

[Zak Rogoff]

Hi Richard (repo-criteria-discuss on CC),

There's been a lot of discussion about the C2 repository criterion, and
it was mentioned in the Ars Technica article about the project recently.
I think we might need to clarify it. The concern revolves around
situations in which repos are compelled to discriminate against certain
users by governments. When they are truly compelled to do it, it doesn't
seem like we should downscore repositories for discriminating/censoring
content, right?

It seems like there are two dimensions upon which the relevant types of
censorship can vary:

1) Does the body requesting censorship by the repo service have actual
power to force the repo service to do the censorship (as in the case of
a US-hosted repo service being forced to remove content based on US
laws), or not (as in the case of Russia asking Github, which is an
American company, to make certain material inaccessible to Russian users)?

2) If the service complies with the request and censors the material, do
they do it by completely removing it from the site, making it
inaccessible to all users, or do they use geolocation or similar to
restrict access to certain areas and not others?

It sounds like the action item for this is to clarify C2 to say
something like:

"Does not discriminate against classes of users, or against any country,
unless legally required to do so by a government that has direct
jurisdiction over the repository services' physical operations. Services
that choose to employ geotargetted censorship of any material to comply
with requests that do not bear the force of law over their actual
operations are still in violation of this criterion. (C2)"

What do you think?

-- 
Zak Rogoff // Campaigns Manager
Free Software Foundation

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