On 4/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Keith Old wrote:
Of course, there are materials that are illegal to
view in one country that
are perfectly legal in another. It is probably illegal to view neutral
accounts of the Tianenmen Square protests in 1989. It is not in most other
countries and would obviously considered as verifiable material.
However, I understand that there is an Optional Protocol to the
International Convention on the Rights of the Child see (
http://www.law-ref.org/CHILDPROTOCOL2/index.html ).
Perhaps it should be considered a banning offence to provide links to
materials that contravene this protocol or to upload images that contravene
it. As it is an international agreement, it might be considered as more of
an international standard. Such materials should certainly not be considered
to be verifiable and editors should be encouraged to remove it on sight.
This suggestion is over the top. Who makes the decision about whether
some site is illegal? Who verifies that? It's frightening to think
that some Big Brother is sitting in a tower somewhere making that kind
of decision that would affect us all.
What is over the top about it? We have admins making decisions everyday to
remove copyvios which are in violation of the law. We have people who
remove perceived link spam which isn't problematic legally but we deem
inappropriate to list on our site.
I am talking about links to a cache on the then LS studios article to
material that had allegedly been the subject of an FBI raid. I removed it
and nominated it for deletion. Why would we want to keep these links on our
servers either in an article or on a talk page?
We need to take interests in what is in the best interests of Wikipedia.
Having links to illegal material is clearly, in my view, not in the best
interests of Wikipedia. I attached links to an international protocol so
that it was not based on standards in one country in international law.
It's easy enough to establish at least o strong prima facie case that
something is a copyvio by simply comparing the material on Wikipedia and
the other site. Link spam is an annoyance that's obvious in it's own
right. I can't comment on the specific site that you mention regardiong
the FBI raid; I haven't seen it.
A simple reference to the protocol is not enough to determine what would
be illegal within its terms. What's over the top is leaving it to
specific individuals to decide that something is illegal over a broad
range of different laws in different places, not just kiddie-porn. What
worries me is people who arrogate upon themselves ondividually the right
to decide what is in the interests of Wikipedia.
Ec