On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2008/12/9 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On the other hand, accepting absolutely anything would quickly get
Wikipedia
blocked everywhere.
Of course, but part of being neutral is that we can't decide what is and isn't acceptable.
I absolutely disagree with that. Like I said, neutrality does not equal moral relativism. An encyclopedia *must* decide what is and isn't acceptable. There is no choice *except* to decide that.
Why not? What happens if we choose not to decide that?
"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." Seriously, though, if you don't decide what to include and what not to include, then you haven't created an encyclopedia, you've created a blob of random bits of content.
We use the law for that.
What law? The law of Florida? What's neutral about that? Clearly
Florida
law, and all US law for that matter, allows for speech which is directly contradictory to the goals of the foundation. Content which is legal
under
Florida law is at best a superset of acceptable content (I say "at best" because there are probably instances of acceptable content which is nonetheless illegal). On the other hand, content which is legal under
the
laws of all states in the world is clearly a subset of acceptable
content.
Yes, Florida law (although I think UK law is pretty similar in this regard). It's not neutral, it's arbitrary, but we have no choice in the matter.
That's exactly the point I made above, though. You have to choose. Why choose arbitrarily?
What legal content under Florida law isn't acceptable? And says who?
The beheading of Nick Berg seems to be legal under Florida law. But I don't find it acceptable, and neither do a majority of Wikipedians. That's just one example though. There are an infinite number of them.
The fact that no-one
has ever been charged with any offence regarding this image that was been around for 32 years is pretty strong evidence that is isn't illegal.
I disagree with that, but moreover, the fact that the UK police were consulted about this very image, directly leading to the decision to ban
the
page, surely is greater evidence of the opposite conclusion.
"Consulted" doesn't mean much, we have no idea what they said, just that they were asked about it. The fact that they didn't, as soon as they saw the article, start arresting record shop owners suggests they didn't think it was particularly illegal.
There's clearly no mens rea on the part of record shop owners at this point.
Furthermore, I
don't see how you can state unequivocally that "no-one has ever been
charged
with any offence regarding this image". The image clearly is illegal in certain middle-eastern countries, isn't it?
I'll concede that point and withdraw the overly generalised remark. No-one has been charged in either the US or the UK, which are the two jurisdictions relevant to this discussion.
Why are those the only jurisdictions relevant? I thought the only relevant jurisdiction was Florida.