WereSpielChequers, 05/10/2011 13:51:
Webpages are only permanent if someone keeps hosting
them. I can see that
if the Italian Wikipedia was back up someone in Italy might send a note to
the WMF asking them to comply with this Italian law. But if an editor is no
longer active on the site it would be retrospective legislation to oblige
them to return to a site in 2012 and publish a rebuttal note to something
they wrote in 2006.
If it is retrospective legislation then there may an opportunity for the
opposition to appeal to the European Court.
You seem to confuse this proposed law with the Barberini vs. Galilei
issue: it's not about rebuttals, it's about publishing of corrections
and statements. There's no need to ask the original author, everyone
could be asked to.
If this legislation is passed then one option would be
for the Italian
Wikipedia to be restored, but with a site notice explaining that "This site
is hosted n the USA and operates under US law rather than Italian law, click
here if you are in Italy and need to see rebuttals posted under Italian law"
. Then you could have a rebuttal namespace transcluded onto the article for
those who have said they are in Italy and therefore need to see the
rebuttals.
I don't think we should solicit such requests, but perhaps it's too soon
to discuss such implementation details as the specific namespace and so on.
Besides, the existence of a sensible process to respect the law wouldn't
prevent people from following different ones, under the crazy original
paragraph 29. Again, think of the 20 M€ trial against WM-IT president...
This blackout is bound to lead to more Italians
reading and perhaps editing
other language versions of Wikipedia instead. It would be interesting to
hear from the WMF what their policy would be on IP requests from the Italian
Police, particularly if any were made re Italian editors editing other
language versions of Wikipedia.
I'm not sure the police can ask IPs here. Not that the police respects
the law.
In the meantime there may be an unusual number of
Italian editors seeking
renames from named accounts to pseudonymous ones. Would it be possible to
upgrade that process so that mailing list archives, former signatures on
talkpages and other uses of an editor's name were also amended?
That wouldn't be effective. Alternative identities should be created and
then privately communicate through clandestine means... :-/
Nemo