On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:51:02 -0500, Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu wrote:
[snip] On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:30:08PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
[snip] Complying with local, regional or national laws which forbid certain expressions or depictions is also censorship. If we want to send a print edition to "strait-laced" countries, such as Communist China (or possibly even Uganda), we will have to respect their laws - or try smuggling in some CDs instead. I want no part of smuggling (the legal liability is too high).
Wikipedia has a structural commitment to the idea that open public collaboration, with a focus on neutrality, can generate value and can approximate truth. Wherever this idea or its practice is forbidden, Wikipedia is by necessity subversive and illegal.
There's no getting around that. If there is a regime under which NPOV is illegal because (let's say) all credit must be given to the Great Leader, then Wikipedia must either fail to propagate into that regime, or else defy the laws of that regime. It cannot propagate into that regime without either breaking the law or becoming anti-Wikipedia.
Where the law says we must lie, we simply must not go unless we are willing to break the law. If we go there and follow the law by lying, then we have destroyed what we went there to build.
Is removing text or an image due to copyright violation "lying"? Some uses of copyright material violates the law in the US (and elsewhere). Removing such material could often be withholding information, especially in the case of images. Do we defy the US law? We may try to justify it under fair use; we may assume a generous interpretation of the law, but if Wikipedia's stance is to outright defy US copyright law, then there is a whole lot of people who will be surprised and dismayed.
If there is a law in country xyz that says that photographs of child pornography are illegal, then will we include them anyway? Oh wait, isn't that true in some US states? Is it Wikipedia's stance to outright defy those laws? If not, why not? Isn't this *exactly* what you are saying we should do?
-- Rich Holton
en.wikipedia:User:Rholton