On 12/8/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Depending solely on the legal protection provided for free speech in a single country is poor strategy. In the freest country that can change with frightening rapidity. For the moment the protection provided elsewhere may appear inferior, but in certain times of crisis that will be better than nothing.
Ec
Is that what you're saying? That I should care about UK libel law because one day the US laws might get so bad that I will be forced to move to the UK? Or maybe you're saying that Wikipedia might one day be forced to do this (which is a bit more reasonable, I guess)?
I actually think the best long-term solution for Wikipedia in this regard is to move out of the reach of pretty much all jurisdictions - to go P2P. But I suppose it's possible (though extremely unlikely) that US free speech laws and precedents could change so fast to necessitate moving outside of US jurisdiction before that's possible. Still, with Wikipedia being under the GFDL we could rebuild an entire organization in a new country rather quickly if we really had to.
By the way, I think it's fairly unlikely that something like this would really become necessary in the US. Our Constitution has many weak points, but its protection of freedom of speech for educational purposes is very strong. The Supreme Court also has a long history of adhering rather tightly with the concept of stare decisis. Such radical changes to the interpretation of our Constitution *usually* take place over a long time span.
Anthony