Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales said he would rather have no Wikipedia in China than comply with any form of censorship.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, Mr. Wales said the company will always refuse to comply with government requests to restrict information, calling access to knowledge and education a human right.
Since early June, in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, China’s Great Firewall has blocked the encrypted version of Wikipedia where users in China could access the site without filters. Now, users can now only access the unencrypted version of the site, where articles on politically sensitive topics are blocked and keyword filtering is common.
Web activists have since called on Wikipedia to default to the encrypted version of their site, where outside sources cannot filter or track user behavior on the site. The move, they say, would force the government to decide between blocking Wikipedia outright and allowing access to the unfiltered version of the site.
Mr. Wales said he liked the idea, but said the company does not yet have the technical ability to do that right now in China, and that the company would not shut down the unencrypted version of the site. He is also not particularly concerned about the threat of cyber attacks, since the company does not engage in malicious activities or carry financial data.
In December, China’s legislature decided to require Internet access providers to collect data about users that links their online names to their real identities.
Asked whether he would comply with a real-name registration system, Mr. Wales replied “not for five seconds.”
Wikipedia has had a tumultuous history in China. Beijing imposed several bans on the crowd-sourced digital encyclopedia, one of which lasted from 2005 to 2007. The Chinese market is now dominated by local players such as Baidu, Inc., which has its own Chinese-language search engine, as well as Soso.com and Hudong.
The Chinese-language Wikipedia, which includes entries from Hong Kong and Taiwan, was established more than a decade ago, and currently has more than 700,000 articles.
The unencrypted version of the Wikipedia site is broadly accessible in China, Mr. Wales says, and notes he has seen growth in participation from mainland Chinese users. But there remain several barriers for mainland Chinese citizens who want to access the site, particularly in areas where extra fees are charged for access to non-Chinese websites.
At Wikimania, the annual conference for the Wikimedia Foundations projects including Wikipedia, Mr. Wales added that the company has opened the lines of communication with the Chinese government, and doesn’t expect to be blocked overnight without warning.
“We don’t approve of filtering, but there is nothing we can do to stop it,” he said.
At the same time, he says, the company believes that access to participation in the creation of “the human story” is a right that can’t be dictated by authorities. “We are quite uncompromising in our position on access to knowledge as a fundamental right, and of course the Chinese government is fairly firm on its own views,” he said.
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