Geoffrey Plourde writes:
While I may not be a lawyer, I believe that this system is a paper tiger. It is simply impossible for them to enforce it for many reasons.
- It is impossible for us to determine which users are from South Korea
- It would be a privacy violation to deliver names and numbers of non
Koreans to the Korean government to be vetted for criminal purposes 3. There exists no means by which they can enforce this law upon the Foundation.
I think this is all basically correct, but would add that the limitations on the amount of user data we keep now (see our Privacy Policy) mean that even South Koreans have a lot of (effective) protection from government attempts to extract "real name" information from Wikimedia databases. (I'll note that edit histories, however, may have IP numbers that help identify particular users to anyone who bothers to look -- this is perhaps a good reason for South Koreans to use logins if they are going to edit.)
That being said, I urge the Foundation to check system architecture and work towards placing all personal information databases in a country with real protections, like the United States. This will prevent any future problems of this nature.
Again, we don't have much in the way of personal information databases, but what little we do have is based in the United States.
In general, I want folks in the Community to know:
1) We're watching S. Korea closely to determine whether their new "real name" policy will affect our projects.
2) We would not change our privacy policy -- which limits the extent to which it's possible in every case to identify particular users -- as a result of such developments in S. Korea or anywhere else.
3) South Korea has little or no ability to impose any "real name" identifying rules on us, not least because of our lack of a significant organizational or economic presence there.
4) We don't currently anticipate anything precisely parallel to the blocking issue in the UK some months ago. There is no sign yet that the S. Korean government will take steps that would result in changes to S. Koreans' ability to access our projects. True, what few steps they could take unilaterally might limit South Koreans' access to our projects in some indiscriminate way, but even in that extreme case it wouldn't result in our changing our Privacy Policy.
--Mike
Mike Godwin, 12/04/2009 14:35:
- We're watching S. Korea closely to determine whether their new "real
name" policy will affect our projects.
Thank you. Gabriella Carlucci, a showgirl and deputy (pretty similar works here in Italy, especially according to our prime minister), has proposed a similar law even in Italy...
Nemo
Youtube blocked uploading and registering by Korean users [1].
So, probably, the option is to do the same and to find some open (or not so open) proxies for Koreans who are willing to edit.
[1] - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/04/youtube-korea-respects-privacy.html
On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 22:11, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
So, probably, the option is to do the same and to find some open (or not so open) proxies for Koreans who are willing to edit.
That’d be extremely stupid if we are actually not required to do so (which is quite likely). So I suggest waiting for the news first.
— Kalan
They also noted that Korean users who wanted to upload content and make comments could alter their user preferences to state residency in a country other than South Korea. I'm not sure how this will help them if the KCC expects IP filtering, but... If declaring national origin was possible in preferences, and we were to become subject to this rule in some way, we could go the same route by unofficially advising users with accounts to note non-Korean residency.
~Nathan
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