Hmm, technically you are right, the wikipedia is in US, so its "just only"
the Wikipedians who are in peril.
However they would be really under serious pressure. Even now, without any
specialised law, Italian Wikipedia had some specifics fighting against
lawsuite imposed by politician (and his son) in a case, where they felt
damaged (while there was technically not ground for it) and specifics of the
Italian law allowed to fill the suite against members of Wikimedia Italia
!!! They forced the page in question down. And the president of Wikimedia
Italia is personally held responsible by the politicians and the suite HER
for tremendous amount of money!
In reality this law would force everyone in Italia underground, and I can
only speculate what would happen, if the pages on Italian Wikipedia would
not comply with the law - what would happn the original authors - listed in
the history of the page.
Unlike as in China, where anyone writing to it from mainland China is
expecting troubles from the start and so he might be writing there
anonymously from the start, through proxy and similarly, in Italia there is
lively comunity of Wikipedians, meeting freely in daylight - What would
happen to them? There is huge Wikimedia Italia (all the people are
potentially targets as already once shown)
And what would be response of the Board of T (WM) - would our higher ups see
the case of Italia similarly to China, if Italian goverment would block
acces to Wikipedia in Italia?
This really is not nice precedent. I don't like it at all.
(the best description of the situation from the perspective of the Italians
I saw sofar was note by Pietro Baroni, I incude it bellow:)
******************************
Pietro Baroni Says:
October 4th, 2011 at 21:40
I am from Italy, and I can explain exactly what this Bill is all about.
Let’s say somebody writes something I don’t like on a website, any website.
Well, in that case, if this bill is approved, I can make the admins of that
website remove that statement within 48 hours. Law would impose that to
them; and not only they would need to remove that thing, but they would have
to replace it with whatever the “offended” person suggest, giving it the
same visibility, graphics and importance as the old statement. All this in
48 hours, by law.
So I think italian Wikipedia is simply saying “If things will go that way,
the basic purpose of wikipedia could not be achieved: wikipedia would not be
free anymore, so we are just giving it up, hoping that things will not turn
that way. Especially because wikipedia has its own system for solving these
problems, and it’s working really good.”
So I don’t think they’re using Wikipedia for a political purpose, but just
to say that if the bill gets approved, wikipedia would not be useful
anymore, so it would have to die.
*************************
With regards
Petr Skupa [[User:Reo On]]
On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Rob Schnautz <bobthewikipedian(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Woah. I just checked
it.wikipedia.org because it
sounded like a
hoax...it's
real. Does the law apply to website providers or to those who contribute to
the website? If it's the former, you're right; Wikipedia is in Florida. But
if it's the latter, then Wikipedia is most certainly affected by the law.
Unfortunate indeed.
Bob
On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Daniel R. Tobias <dan(a)tobias.name> wrote:
There have been a bunch of items in my Twitter
feed about how the
Italian Wikipedia has shut down in response to a proposed repressive
law regarding mandatory takedowns of allegedly defamatory online
material in Italy. I have some problems with such a move, as it sets
a precedent of having a particular language edition of Wikipedia tied
to an uncomfortable degree with the politics of one country just
because that's the primary place the language is spoken. It's always
been true that the separate editions of Wikipedia are by language,
not country. The Chinese Wikipedia keeps operating despite the
repressive censorship of China, and if that country chooses to block
it, that's their problem. English Wikipedia doesn't belong to
England, or America, or any other English-speaking country, though
the fact that the primary servers are in the USA does force it to
comply to U.S. law.
Unless there are servers in Italy, the Italian Wikipedia isn't
compelled to follow any Italian law, though there could be
consequences for any Italy-based participants if they don't,
including the possibility of individuals there being held responsible
for what they write or fail to take down, or possible mandatory
blockage of the site in that country if they choose to go the "Great
Firewall" route.
I remember the German Wikipedia being affected at one point by a
court injunction, but that only shut down a redirected .de domain,
not the site itself as a subdomain of US-registered
wikipedia.org.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site:
http://mailformat.dan.info/
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http://webtips.dan.info/
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