[WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

[Fastfission]

I think there might be two issues here -- that of the legality of the
contributor and the legality of Wikipedia's hosting of the content.

If I were somebody with access to U.S. military secrets and I posted
them to Wikipedia, I would certainly be *personally* legally
accountable for having them up. Because Wikipedia is in the U.S., it
too would probably be legally accountable as well under U.S.
classification laws. But what if they were, say, Iranian military
secrets? The contributor, if they were Iranian, would probably be
personally accountable still. But since it is unlikely that Iranian
classification laws apply to entities in the U.S., there would be no
legal issue for Wikipedia to have them up (unless they in some way
fell under U.S. law, which a few categories of information still
would).

(The WP:V question is different entirely, of course.)

FF



On 4/7/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a problem: what happens when the contents of an article can
> only be verified by relying on sources which are illegal to view?
>
> The issue has arisen in the context of the article currently known as
> [[2004 Ukranian child pornography raids]]
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Ukranian_child_pornography_raids>.
>
> The article has changed now, but much of the content (describing the
> pornography-producing organisation, aswell as describing the actual
> material produced) was based on the assertions of those who had viewed
> the content. On a couple of occasions, when sources were asked for in
> relation to particular claims in the article, users provided links to
> the Internet Archive's stored copy of the pornographic website.
>
> Based on the descriptions given in the news sources, it would be
> illegal for me (and for most others) to view this content, and thus it
> would be illegal for me to verify the article. Thus, from my
> perspective, the article is unverifiable.
>
> I think it would be very much a matter of common sense to alter
> [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] to prohibit the use of illegal sources to
> verify articles. But the question is where should the line of
> definition be drawn? Laws vary substantially across jurisdictions.
> Should we prohibit reliance on sources which are illegal to view in
> Florida? Laws are much stricter in other countries: New Zealand
> springs to mind as an example, but there are other countries where I
> am sure the laws are even stricter.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
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