[WikiEN-l] "Stocking personal details"

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> The French Wikipedia is written in the French language, but it isn't
> French. It is hosted by an American charity on servers in America (and
> a few in the Netherlands, I think). French law doesn't apply.
>


This is quite wrong, and a dangerous fallacy to promote, Thomas. To give an
example, a few months back, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka got a phone
call from the German police over his addition of a pornographic video to
the German article on pornography. The video he added violated German
pornography law, which requires an effective age filter for explicit
pornographic material. Achim wrote about his experience in the "Kurier"
(the German Signpost):

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Kurier&oldid=103520132
 (NSFW)

He took the video out again, and the Verein helped him with a lawyer. In
the end the prosecutor's office let him off, it seems because the single
edit was too minor an offence for them to prosecute. But there is no
question that if you live in a country, and do things in Wikipedia that are
illegal in your country, you are individually liable under the laws of your
country.

Remember that the legal liability is always first and foremost the
contributor's, and not the Foundation's. In the German case, the police and
prosecutor's office came for Achim as an individual. They did not come for
the WMF or Wikimedia Germany.

Whether or not this is a problem for French Wikimedians working in French
Wikipedia depends purely and solely on French law.