While we attempt to act consistently with the laws of other
jurisdictions, the fact that the Foundation and its projects operate
under U.S. law requires us to conduct our affairs accordingly. This
means that when U.S. law is inconsistent with other jurisdictions and
requires different things from us, we are compelled to choose U.S. law
as our guide.
This is not an unusual situation or even an imperialistic one -- every
enterprise that operates across national borders is compelled to
address the problem of "choice of law." (One of the things we
routinely do in our business arrangements is decide which law applies.)
I believe the Spanish-language community is making a mistake in not
translating English-language legal disclaimers, since even if they're
not translated, the Foundation is compelled to obey American state and
federal law, and it does not do other communities any good to withhold
that fact.
--Mike
On Oct 12, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Casey Brown wrote:
On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sebastián González
<daleboca782(a)gmail.com
wrote:
As I have been informed at Meta,
the legal disclaimers of the
wikipedia in
english were formulated by a lawyer of the foundation, and it's
content is
beyond discussion or consensus of the community of users. If one day
there's
the need to modify something of it, it would be decided by the
foundation.
The Meta discussion referred to is
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Disclaimers
. I am not sure if Alex was considered a
"lawyer of the
foundation". He may have just served in an advisory
capacity and
that document could have been written from a community member's
perspective.
By logic, the same thing would apply to the disclaimers of all
wikipedias,
wich are traductions of the one in english. But are those disclaimers
binding documents in the legal sense, or just of informative
purposes? The
GNU free documentation license states "In case of a disagreement
between the
translation and the original version of this License or a notice or
disclaimer, the original version will prevail", does something similar
applies between disclaimers of wikipedia?
Let's provide a working example of this. The disclaimer of the
wikipedia in
spanish, located at
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsab…
,
does not include any mention to the paragraph "Jurisdiction and
legality
of content" of the version in english, wich states that the database
is
maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and
federal
law of the state of Florida, in the United States. Far from being
just a
part that was missing due to an incomplete translation, I have seen
that
some users, including some admins, deliberately refuse to
acknowledge the
authority of US law over the content of wikipedia, either as a plot to
prevent consensus about non-free content from ever happening or as a
mistaken display of patriotism. As far as I understand (but correct
me if
I'm wrong) being written in spanish and having a huge majority of
admins and
users from spanish speaking countries rather than from the US do not
erase
the ties with the US and turn the laws of Spain, Argentina,
Venezuela or
other spanish speaking countries into the only ones the project
would answer
to.
What's the situation, then? Can those things be done, or does the
law of the
US apply to all projects regardless of users liking it or not? Can
wikis in
non-english languajes be allowed to interpret and write the legal
disclaimer
as they see fit, or should a version written or supervised by the
foundation
be enforced?
(CC'ing to Mike to make sure he gets a look at this.)
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
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