On 7/8/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Ok, "every" was a gross exaggeration, sorry. It does seem to happen a little more often than I'm happy with. I doubt OTRS hardly ever receives legitimate complaints that require blanking the entire article. Even if there is a marginally questionable legal issue with the article, it's likely only to be in one small section, and that small section is the part that should be blanked (and the article protected).
The problem is that certain OTRS people appear to want WP:OFFICE level powers without either gaining community support or a board ruling.
IANAL, but as far as I'm aware, the only kind of legal complaint that we need to worry about is libel. Real legal threats from real lawyers about libel need to be taken seriously. Other legal threats can, and should, be ignored. This legal threat was, apparently, about trademarks - just because the person complaining was a real lawyer doesn't mean they aren't talking complete nonsense.
IANAL but # wikipedia can't afford one.
Quite a selection of legal complaints that I suspect may have some basis (ie the courts would not throw the case straight out):
Content based: Copyvio Born secret issues Various stuff to do with child porn Various stuff relating to bypassing encryption software Certain images could require certain forms of record keeping (those depicting sexual acts) Death threats Some stuff based around privacy laws
Software based:
Copyvio Patent vio Various stuff relating to bypassing encryption software
Not all of these will be handled by OTRS of course.
Of these:
Copyvio- we have a lot of processes in place to neutralise these.
Born secret issues- If we hit by that we may be hitting NOR issues otherwise eh any resulting court case would be interesting to watch. ACLU might be interested
Various stuff relating to bypassing encryption software- Lack of useful caselaw. EFF might be interested.
Various stuff to do with child porn- kill. Issues related to lolicon are more complex again ACLU may be interested. Main problem with this area is that it can be hard to figure out the exact borderline without expensive court cases with some seriously negative PR.
Patent vio- I don't know enough about the validity of software patents to comment.