-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Raymond [mailto:jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2007 10:39 AM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] HD DVD key mess - OFFICE/Foundation?
Kat Walsh wrote:
If deleting something illegal is "out of process", process is broken and should be ignored. (And possibly changed. Either way, the result should be the same.)
You misunderstand, then. Illegal things *should* be deleted - they should *not* be ruled illegal by one - or many - administrators with no legal background, little legal background, or a legal background not verified by the Foundation.
Hot news: Laws do not apply only to lawyers. Everyone is expected to conform. We are in an activity to which certain laws apply. We are all responsible for having some familiarity with what is permissible and what is not and applying it.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
Hot news: Laws do not apply only to lawyers. Everyone is expected to conform. We are in an activity to which certain laws apply. We are all responsible for having some familiarity with what is permissible and what is not and applying it.
I'm refraining from making a glib, catty response here.
Of course laws do not apply only to lawyers, and to assume I said as much is to dodge the issue - laws apply to everyone, but I'm certainly not going to trust a British somebody and a early-20-something to decide what's actually legal and illegal for us - I'll leave that to the lawyers, thanks.
You're a retired lawyer, please, chime in.
-Jeff
On 5/2/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Of course laws do not apply only to lawyers, and to assume I said as much is to dodge the issue - laws apply to everyone, but I'm certainly not going to trust a British somebody and a early-20-something to decide what's actually legal and illegal for us
You don'r have a choice. A lot of our boarderline "is this a copyvio?" (answer erm maybe) is delt with by 20 something brits. We simply can't afford the lawyers to answer all of them.
geni wrote:
You don'r have a choice. A lot of our boarderline "is this a copyvio?" (answer erm maybe) is delt with by 20 something brits. We simply can't afford the lawyers to answer all of them.
Again, this isn't a copyvio situation (and our copyright paranoia is a whole different can of worms), but a situation of contradictory and unclear legality that shouldn't be handled the way it has been thus far.
-Jeff
On 02/05/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Again, this isn't a copyvio situation (and our copyright paranoia is a whole different can of worms), but a situation of contradictory and unclear legality that shouldn't be handled the way it has been thus far.
As I said, the consistent "go away you idiots" response to people spamming the number is IMO just the thing we need to make the point this is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper.
This is a first for us; procedure can only be advisory in a so far unique case.
I did go to the Slashdot story and tell the people complaining of Wikipedia censorship to try our sister site that *is* a newspaper:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Digg.com_suffers_user_revolt%3B_Founder_will_not...
- d.
On 5/2/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
geni wrote:
You don'r have a choice. A lot of our boarderline "is this a copyvio?" (answer erm maybe) is delt with by 20 something brits. We simply can't afford the lawyers to answer all of them.
Again, this isn't a copyvio situation (and our copyright paranoia is a whole different can of worms), but a situation of contradictory and unclear legality that shouldn't be handled the way it has been thus far.
It's a situation of contradictory and unclear legality under copyright law, which would make it an alleged copyright law violation.
I'd appreciate the foundation coming right out and saying that we aren't allowed to mention the key, if that's what they want, but as someone coded up the site to not allow the key to be mentioned, that's almost as good. Who added the string to the list of banned words? Why did they do so? I assume it was an employee doing so as an agent of the foundation.
Anthony
On 02/05/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'd appreciate the foundation coming right out and saying that we aren't allowed to mention the key, if that's what they want
Whatever you do, /don't mention the key/! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it :-)
Anthony wrote:
It's a situation of contradictory and unclear legality under copyright law, which would make it an alleged copyright law violation.
My understanding (which is more than some who were involved in the decision have, but less than what should legitimately be construed as some sort of important understanding) is that this goes well beyond copyright issues and into other issues regarding fair use, archiving, and the laws surrounding copying of copyrighted material - none of which we're in any danger of violating. The problem is that the rules in place governing those things contradict the issues that DO potentially affect us, the hosting of such legally ambiguous information.
This is why we need an actual lawyer, and not a pile of non-lawyer admins, to make a distinction as to whether we need to worry about this when the two situations appear to contradict ourselves, especially in the abscense of a takedown notice.
I'd appreciate the foundation coming right out and saying that we aren't allowed to mention the key, if that's what they want, but as someone coded up the site to not allow the key to be mentioned, that's almost as good. Who added the string to the list of banned words? Why did they do so? I assume it was an employee doing so as an agent of the foundation.
And now the nose is entirely gone. Way to go.
Egads, how did we end up with these people?
-Jeff
Anthony wrote:
On 5/2/07, Jeff Raymond wrote:
geni wrote:
You don'r have a choice. A lot of our boarderline "is this a copyvio?" (answer erm maybe) is delt with by 20 something brits. We simply can't afford the lawyers to answer all of them.
Again, this isn't a copyvio situation (and our copyright paranoia is a whole different can of worms), but a situation of contradictory and unclear legality that shouldn't be handled the way it has been thus far.
It's a situation of contradictory and unclear legality under copyright law, which would make it an alleged copyright law violation.
An allegation does not a violation make.
I'd appreciate the foundation coming right out and saying that we aren't allowed to mention the key, if that's what they want, but as someone coded up the site to not allow the key to be mentioned, that's almost as good.
More important would be for the Foundation to develoip a clear arm's length relationship with the communities that it hosts. It must respond to proper legal notices in accordance with the law, but should not be making unilateral determinations of what is and is not illegal. It can suggest to a community that given content may be clearly illegal, but in the absence of a proper legal demand it remains up to that community itself to take the action it deems fit. Doing otherwise could compromise its status as an ISP.
Ec
On 5/3/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
making unilateral determinations of what is and is not illegal. It can suggest to a community that given content may be clearly illegal, but in the absence of a proper legal demand it remains up to that community itself to take the action it deems fit.
It sound like you're saying the foundation should always "wait for the takedown" even if it knows for sure that material is illegal. Bad advice. Actual knowledge of infringement removes the safe harbor for copyright infringement under OCILLA. What actually constitutes actual knowledge may be debatable... but that doesn't appear to be accounted for in your suggestion.
On 04/05/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
It sound like you're saying the foundation should always "wait for the takedown" even if it knows for sure that material is illegal.
Fair use can include up to 100% of a work. It was then retrospectively not illegal. Abusing this tends to get awards of attorney fees and sanctioned plaintiff lawyers.
Were the Pentagon Papers legal before the newspaper won in court?
We are of course not a news organisation. Which is why on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:HD_DVD_encryption_key_controversy I'm gathering actual news stories (not blog entries on news sites, but proper stories from proper journalistic news sites that can suffer actual pain for putting up illegal content) containing the magic keyspam.
- d.
On Thu, 3 May 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
It sound like you're saying the foundation should always "wait for the takedown" even if it knows for sure that material is illegal. Bad advice. Actual knowledge of infringement removes the safe harbor for copyright infringement under OCILLA. What actually constitutes actual knowledge may be debatable... but that doesn't appear to be accounted for in your suggestion.
This isn't a normal DMCA takedown situation. A DMCA takedown happens when the owner claims that the material is copyright. Removing it is subject to a safe harbor. The claim here is that the material here is illegal because of a different DMCA provision, not that it's copyrighted. I don't believe the safe harbor applies at all.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
On 5/3/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
making unilateral determinations of what is and is not illegal. It can suggest to a community that given content may be clearly illegal, but in the absence of a proper legal demand it remains up to that community itself to take the action it deems fit.
It sound like you're saying the foundation should always "wait for the takedown" even if it knows for sure that material is illegal. Bad advice. Actual knowledge of infringement removes the safe harbor for copyright infringement under OCILLA. What actually constitutes actual knowledge may be debatable... but that doesn't appear to be accounted for in your suggestion.
What constitutes actual knowledge is indeed highly debatable. What we should be very much avoiding is the word of third parties with no connection to the work.
Ec
On 5/2/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Again, this isn't a copyvio situation (and our copyright paranoia is a whole different can of worms), but a situation of contradictory and unclear legality that shouldn't be handled the way it has been thus far.
-Jeff
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#A_little_game:_...
No it isn't copyright but it doesn't fit into any of the normal areas of IP law (born secret might be the closest thing (heh neither have ever been tested in court)).
Untill the foundation does it's thing it will have to be handled in the normal way which means those dealing with the issue useing a mixture of what knowlage they do have and playing safe.