Toby wrote:
The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias are also subject only to US and (I think) California law. That's where they're located, after all. (Although suggestions have been made in the past to self-censor [[fr:]] and [[zh:]] in order to prevent the governments of France and the PRC from declaring it illegal to *view* them, which isn't exactly the same thing.)
IANAL
Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
General comments to all:
If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not shield you from the laws of your own nation.
But what is legal for Wikipedia to have on its server in San Diego is really only a matter of California/United States law (as Toby points out).
I don't think the first part of this point gets stressed often enough.
Of course, what is "appropriate" is a different matter and is largely dictated by consensus and standing policy (both Wikipedia wide and language specific).
<devil's advocate> It is here where an interesting question arises; should particular languages have /added/ restrictions across their own language version of Wikipedia that go beyond California/US law in order to make texts written in French, for example, legal to have on a server in France?
Wouldn't that make the texts more useful to French-speaking peoples (well, at least the French speakers in France)? </devil's advocate>
I would argue that this is a dangerous idea because then the laws of potentially every nation on earth could have veto power over what we have on Wikipedia just to make it theoretically possible to have our text usable as is and hosted on a server in each of those nations. The result of that would be massive censorship in order to meet the lowest common denominator.
IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two things (as far as the legal issue goes):
1) What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting from. 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
Both of the above factors limit what we each can individually submit. So for example; a user writing from Germany has to respect restrictions set forth by German law and US law in what they submit while a user writing from Australia has to do the same in respect to Australian and US law.
Hm. This concept should be on a general disclaimer or something....
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Maveric149 wrote in part:
Toby wrote:
The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias are also subject only to US and (I think) California law. That's where they're located, after all.
Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
OK, I wasn't thinking about the legal liabilities of the *contributor*. That's a good point.
If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not shield you from the laws of your own nation.
Yes, a *personal* risk.
IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two things (as far as the legal issue goes):
- What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting
from. 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
I don't think that we-as-a-group (Wikipedia as an institution) should concern ourselves (in our policies) with issue #1. We should not, for example, declare it a bannable offence or against Wikipetiquette to violate local laws when submitting. We-as-individuals (each individual editor acting privately) have to concern ourselves with #1, by our own standards of personal risk. A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take in posting potentially illegal material while in that country. But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her. (I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)
-- Toby
On Thu, 15 May 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Toby wrote:
The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias are also subject only to US and (I think) California law. That's where they're located, after all. (Although suggestions have been made in the past to self-censor [[fr:]] and [[zh:]] in order to prevent the governments of France and the PRC from declaring it illegal to *view* them, which isn't exactly the same thing.)
IANAL
Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
General comments to all:
If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not shield you from the laws of your own nation.
But what is legal for Wikipedia to have on its server in San Diego is really only a matter of California/United States law (as Toby points out).
I don't think the first part of this point gets stressed often enough.
Of course, what is "appropriate" is a different matter and is largely dictated by consensus and standing policy (both Wikipedia wide and language specific).
<devil's advocate> It is here where an interesting question arises; should particular languages have /added/ restrictions across their own language version of Wikipedia that go beyond California/US law in order to make texts written in French, for example, legal to have on a server in France?
Wouldn't that make the texts more useful to French-speaking peoples (well, at least the French speakers in France)? </devil's advocate>
I would argue that this is a dangerous idea because then the laws of potentially every nation on earth could have veto power over what we have on Wikipedia just to make it theoretically possible to have our text usable as is and hosted on a server in each of those nations. The result of that would be massive censorship in order to meet the lowest common denominator.
IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two things (as far as the legal issue goes):
- What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting
from. 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
Both of the above factors limit what we each can individually submit. So for example; a user writing from Germany has to respect restrictions set forth by German law and US law in what they submit while a user writing from Australia has to do the same in respect to Australian and US law.
Hm. This concept should be on a general disclaimer or something....
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l