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Sebastián González

13 Oct 2008 13 Oct '08

1:08 a.m.

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. 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?

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Casey Brown

13 Oct 13 Oct

1:31 a.m.

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sebastián González <daleboca782(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

...

The Meta discussion referred to is < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Disclaimers>gt;. 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 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

Mike Godwin

14 Oct 14 Oct

4:02 p.m.

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:

. 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 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

Robert Rohde

13 Oct 13 Oct

1:31 a.m.

Two points. 1) I think whoever you spoke to at Meta was more or less mistaken. The disclaimers were written by Wikipedians not lawyers (you can look at their edit history). However, they are also very old and largely static. For example, the general disclaimer has had only ~3 substantive edits in three years. Possibly the Foundation's lawyer actually endorsed it at some point, but there is not any record of that as far as I am aware. I'll defer the Foundation about whether they would want to take control of disclaimers moving forward, but many years ago they were originally written by consensus. 2) The WMF and its projects are subject to US laws. Period. Many non-English projects also strive to comply with laws as existing in regions that are home to their language, e.g. Russian laws on the ru-wiki, Italian laws on the it-wiki, etc. However, given the physical location of the WMF servers, no project is immune from the reach of US laws. -Robert Rohde On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Sebastián González <daleboca782(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Pharos

1:34 a.m.

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sebastián González <daleboca782(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

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.

Slightly off-topic, but it should be pointed out that the US has the second or third-largest Hispanophone population in the world. Thanks, Richard

Pharos

1:35 a.m.

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sebastián González <daleboca782(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Slightly off-topic, but it should be pointed out that the US has the second or third-largest Hispanophone population in the world. Thanks, Richard

OK, 5th, but it is growing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language

Platonides

14 Oct 14 Oct

1:24 a.m.

Sebastián González wrote:

...

Diffs? You can see in the history page [1] that it hasn't been received changes nor edit conflicts recently. All changes for the last year were minor, as even non-Spanish speakers can see [2] Same applies for the talk page: only minor issues (borders, interwikis...).

...

I feel you have personal issues with it. Sorry if it is not, but there have been too many people coming to this list to complain about X done (wrongly [3]) on project Y. Why haven't you noted it on the talk page? Or the Village Pump? Moreover, which is your username? I can't find a Sebastián González on Spanish Wikipedia, meta, or the local mailing list.

...

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?

Maybe you're trying to get a point to introduce fair use on eswiki? "The servers are in USA, local law is not important" has always been an argument for fair use, and "there is no fair use in {Spain, Venezuela, Uruguay...}" against it. Which is anyway not too relevant. That Spanish Wikipedia has to comply with US laws isn't an excuse for not obeying the copyright laws of Spain, Venezuela or Argentina, when relevant. *Specially* when you're on those countries or a great number of your contributors are. Should we encourage to disobey their local law?? Maybe on certain matters, on totalitariam regimes... but copyright is not one of those cases. Even more, the fact that hypothetically the WMF would win a fair use case settled on the US, doesn't mean that it should try to force it or that it would be able to support it. We should not even reach that point. [4] [[es:User:Platonides]] ~~~~ 1-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_gener… 2-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ALimitaci%C3%B3n_gen… 3-http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version 4-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037170.html

Nikola Smolenski

7:57 a.m.

On Tuesday 14 October 2008 00:24:39 Platonides wrote:

...

Sebastián González wrote:

This is simply not true. From http://www.wipo.int/clea/en/text_html.jsp?lang=EN&id=1373#JD_ES070_A32 32. It shall be lawful to include in one's own work fragments of the works of others, whether of written, sound or audiovisual character, and also to include isolated works of three-dimensional, photographic, figurative or comparable art character, provided that the works concerned have already been disclosed and that they are included by way of quotation or for analysis, comment or critical assessment. Such use may only be made for teaching or research purposes and to the extent justified by the purpose of the inclusion, and the source and the name of the author of the work shall be stated. 35.-(1) Any work liable to be seen or heard in the reporting of current events may be reproduced, distributed and communicated to the public, but only to the extent justified by the informatory purpose.

Bence Damokos

10:06 a.m.

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

...

Sebastián González wrote:

As I have been informed at Meta, the legal disclaimers of the wikipedia

english were formulated by a lawyer of the foundation, and it's content

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.

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

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

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?

Maybe you're trying to get a point to introduce fair use on eswiki? "The servers are in USA, local law is not important" has always been an argument for fair use, and "there is no fair use in {Spain, Venezuela, Uruguay...}" against it. Which is anyway not too relevant. That Spanish Wikipedia has to comply with US laws isn't an excuse for not obeying the copyright laws of Spain, Venezuela or Argentina, when relevant. *Specially* when you're on those countries or a great number of your contributors are. Should we encourage to disobey their local law?? Maybe on certain matters, on totalitariam regimes... but copyright is not one of those cases. Even more, the fact that hypothetically the WMF would win a fair use case settled on the US, doesn't mean that it should try to force it or that it would be able to support it. We should not even reach that point. [4] [[es:User:Platonides]] ~~~~ 1- http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general… 2-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ALimitaci%C3%B3n_gen… 3-http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version 4-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037170.htm… _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I believe the WMF has a policy on the copyright issue ( http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy) solving the copyright question. Do we close the original disclaimer question that it is Wikipedia-edition specific, and not a WMF document that should be the same in all languages, or at least referred to as the official version? - Bence Damokos

Sebastián González

6:39 p.m.

The issue has been discused a year ago, when it was tried to make "Biographies of living people" an official policy at http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Discusi%C3%B3n:Votaciones/2007/Biogr…, I did not explain in full detail such things because I realize those are local issues and I did not want to bother with topics wich are trivial for this channel. The main topics of Wikimedia projects being under US law or not and if disclaimers have to say X things or can be made up as users like, is worth being asked here; if this or that proposal should be official policy at X or Y project, is not. In fact, I'm not even interested in fair use, my main topics of edit are about history, and I can work very well with paintings in PD. I'm not hiding my username. I'm Belgrano at that project, and before the username change I was Thialfi. I simply couldn't figure out how to configure things. Out of topic: I did consider posting the topic in there for discussion. However, the most likely outcome of that would be the first administrator thinking that the request is correct ad adding the text to the disclaimer, and later one of the users who refuse to mention the the projects being under US law would accuse me of trying to deceive he first administrator and introduce sneak changes without it being noticed. So, before posting in there I wanted to make sure if it's really a topic subject to local consensus or if there is a global and official stance. I asked at the forum in Meta (considering it would be a project-wide type of question), and from there I had been redirected here. I doubt I would post more mails here anyway unless redirected again, it's a complicated system and I prefer the village pumps or talk pages. I know, those are internal issues of no concern here, I just wanted to explain myself. I think the answers received are enough to understand the situation I asked in the first place, so this thread can be finished. 2008/10/13 Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com>

...

Sebastián González wrote:

As I have been informed at Meta, the legal disclaimers of the wikipedia

english were formulated by a lawyer of the foundation, and it's content

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.

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

spanish, located at

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsab… ,

federal

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

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?

Maybe you're trying to get a point to introduce fair use on eswiki? "The servers are in USA, local law is not important" has always been an argument for fair use, and "there is no fair use in {Spain, Venezuela, Uruguay...}" against it. Which is anyway not too relevant. That Spanish Wikipedia has to comply with US laws isn't an excuse for not obeying the copyright laws of Spain, Venezuela or Argentina, when relevant. *Specially* when you're on those countries or a great number of your contributors are. Should we encourage to disobey their local law?? Maybe on certain matters, on totalitariam regimes... but copyright is not one of those cases. Even more, the fact that hypothetically the WMF would win a fair use case settled on the US, doesn't mean that it should try to force it or that it would be able to support it. We should not even reach that point. [4] [[es:User:Platonides]] ~~~~ 1- http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general… 2-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ALimitaci%C3%B3n_gen… 3-http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version 4-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037170.htm… _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Platonides

15 Oct 15 Oct

12:48 a.m.

Ok. I was confused by the unknown sender and lack of recent discussion about it. In fact, I wasn't even aware you were renamed! @Nikola: Although almost every country contries have a "right to cite", US Fair use has a greater scope than most of them. But I'd prefer not to enter into Fair use discussion issues.

Nikola Smolenski

10:02 a.m.

Platonides wrote:

...

@Nikola: Although almost every country contries have a "right to cite", US Fair use has a greater scope than most of them. But I'd prefer not to enter into Fair use discussion issues.

Yes, however some Wikipedias appear not to follow even the right to cite their countries have.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

2:47 p.m.

Nikola Smolenski wrote:

...

Platonides wrote:

@Nikola: Although almost every country contries have a "right to cite", US Fair use has a greater scope than most of them. But I'd prefer not to enter into Fair use discussion issues.

Yes, however some Wikipedias appear not to follow even the right to cite their countries have.

Do you mean in terms of breaching the right to cite applicability limits, or in terms of not making full use of (the - more restrictive than US fair use provisions - but nevertheless extant) their countrys right to cite exceptions to the strict interpretation of copyright law. I could see that there might easily be both types of situations. In fact I would be surprised if there was no wikipedia that was paranoid that way. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Nikola Smolenski

3 p.m.

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

...

Nikola Smolenski wrote:

Platonides wrote:

@Nikola: Although almost every country contries have a "right to cite", US Fair use has a greater scope than most of them. But I'd prefer not to enter into Fair use discussion issues.

Yes, however some Wikipedias appear not to follow even the right to cite their countries have.

Yes, there are cases of both.

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9 participants

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participants (9)

Bence Damokos
Casey Brown
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Mike Godwin
Nikola Smolenski
Pharos
Platonides
Robert Rohde
Sebastián González