Toby wrote:
The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias are also subject only to US and (I think) California law. That's where they're located, after all. (Although suggestions have been made in the past to self-censor [[fr:]] and [[zh:]] in order to prevent the governments of France and the PRC from declaring it illegal to *view* them, which isn't exactly the same thing.)
IANAL
Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
General comments to all:
If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not shield you from the laws of your own nation.
But what is legal for Wikipedia to have on its server in San Diego is really only a matter of California/United States law (as Toby points out).
I don't think the first part of this point gets stressed often enough.
Of course, what is "appropriate" is a different matter and is largely dictated by consensus and standing policy (both Wikipedia wide and language specific).
<devil's advocate> It is here where an interesting question arises; should particular languages have /added/ restrictions across their own language version of Wikipedia that go beyond California/US law in order to make texts written in French, for example, legal to have on a server in France?
Wouldn't that make the texts more useful to French-speaking peoples (well, at least the French speakers in France)? </devil's advocate>
I would argue that this is a dangerous idea because then the laws of potentially every nation on earth could have veto power over what we have on Wikipedia just to make it theoretically possible to have our text usable as is and hosted on a server in each of those nations. The result of that would be massive censorship in order to meet the lowest common denominator.
IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two things (as far as the legal issue goes):
1) What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting from. 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
Both of the above factors limit what we each can individually submit. So for example; a user writing from Germany has to respect restrictions set forth by German law and US law in what they submit while a user writing from Australia has to do the same in respect to Australian and US law.
Hm. This concept should be on a general disclaimer or something....
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Maveric149 wrote in part:
Toby wrote:
The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias are also subject only to US and (I think) California law. That's where they're located, after all.
Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
OK, I wasn't thinking about the legal liabilities of the *contributor*. That's a good point.
If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not shield you from the laws of your own nation.
Yes, a *personal* risk.
IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two things (as far as the legal issue goes):
- What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting
from. 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
I don't think that we-as-a-group (Wikipedia as an institution) should concern ourselves (in our policies) with issue #1. We should not, for example, declare it a bannable offence or against Wikipetiquette to violate local laws when submitting. We-as-individuals (each individual editor acting privately) have to concern ourselves with #1, by our own standards of personal risk. A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take in posting potentially illegal material while in that country. But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her. (I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)
-- Toby
(Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu):
- What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting from.
- What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US law).
I don't think that we-as-a-group (Wikipedia as an institution) should concern ourselves (in our policies) with issue #1. We should not, for example, declare it a bannable offence or against Wikipetiquette to violate local laws when submitting.
Indeed, I would consider it heroic to violate local laws to post useful information on Wikipedia, such as first-hand descriptions of the acts of despotic governments, or information about how to defeat net access restrictions.
A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not legal in California, such as the posting of information that is public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney. We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not legal in California, such as the posting of information that is public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney. We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
But we can solve this in a tricky way: installing "Wikipeda-Foreign-Law-Server". Articles about Disney you store and serve from somewhere outside of California and so on ... ;-) Possibly some island ;) It's done with money, and thats more complicate to transfer than wikipedia articles ;)
Smurf
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
Indeed, I would consider it heroic to violate local laws to post useful information on Wikipedia, such as first-hand descriptions of the acts of despotic governments, or information about how to defeat net access restrictions.
A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not legal in California, such as the posting of information that is public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney. We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
One of the online text outfits has some of its materials on an Australian server where the copyright term is life + 50 years. It advises Americans that they may be breaking their own laws if they dare to look at these texts. Having an aditional Wikipedia server outside the US to hold this kind of material could be useful.
Eclecticology
Lee Daniel Crocker schrieb:
Indeed, I would consider it heroic to violate local laws to post useful information on Wikipedia, such as first-hand descriptions of the acts of despotic governments, or information about how to defeat net access restrictions.
Me too. How about not showing IP addresses on the Chinese Wikipedia and some others?
A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not legal in California, such as the posting of information that is public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney. We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
Kurt
On Fri, 16 May 2003 13:06:53 +0100, Kurt Jansson jansson@gmx.net gave utterance to the following:
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
To some extent it is a commercial decision. If a film steps over the boundary where it will earn a restricted rating then a big chunk of the potential audience is unable to spend money on it. I think you will find that the "boundary" moves according to the target audience - an action movie which will appeal to the young will not get away with as much before earning an R as an intellectual movie aimed at an older audience. And of course sometimes the star's contract stipulate's what they will and will not do.
Kurt Jansson wrote in part:
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
Not laws primarily, but industry self-regulation. That said, the self-censorship began to avoid the imposition of laws.
-- Toby
Kurt Jansson wrote:
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
America is the porn capital of the world, so I'm not sure what kind of movies you're watching. Other than broadcast television and radio, which are censored through the means of licensing, there are basically no restrictions on nudity in movies in the United States.
(Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com):
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
America is the porn capital of the world,...
Apparently Jim has never been to Amsterdam. :-)
But for the most part, he's right: there are no restrictions on nudity in movies, but the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie. French folks don't have a problem taking their kids to nice family movie that happens to have a bit of nudity in it. American parents in the heartland will consider a movie with any nudity to be for adults only, and its market will be hurt.
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 12:49, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
(Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com):
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
America is the porn capital of the world,...
Apparently Jim has never been to Amsterdam. :-)
But for the most part, he's right: there are no restrictions on nudity in movies, but the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie. French folks don't have a problem taking their kids to nice family movie that happens to have a bit of nudity in it. American parents in the heartland will consider a movie with any nudity to be for adults only, and its market will be hurt.
While technically true, that's grossly misleading. There are few legal restrictions on nudity in the movies, but there are draconian quasi-legal industry restrictions.
Instead of "the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie" the more accurate portrayal is
Any explicit sex will prevent a movie from being shown in any mainstream theater, with few exceptions.
The MPAA decides the moral code for acceptable movies with an iron fist, often demanding changes to the movie for it to get a "non-adult" rating.
Any movie they deem to be NC-17 has no financial future in U.S. movie theaters.
But for the most part, he's right: there are no restrictions on nudity in movies, but the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie. French folks don't have a problem taking their kids to nice family movie that happens to have a bit of nudity in it. American parents in the heartland will consider a movie with any nudity to be for adults only, and its market will be hurt.
While technically true, that's grossly misleading. There are few legal restrictions on nudity in the movies, but there are draconian quasi-legal industry restrictions.
Instead of "the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie" the more accurate portrayal is
Any explicit sex will prevent a movie from being shown in any mainstream theater, with few exceptions.
The MPAA decides the moral code for acceptable movies with an iron fist, often demanding changes to the movie for it to get a "non-adult" rating.
Any movie they deem to be NC-17 has no financial future in U.S. movie theaters.
Cunc is the one misrepresenting the facts here: there are /no/ legal restrictions on nudity in movies of any kind, period. Yes, the MPAA rules with "an iron fist", but it is precisely because that's the way the American public wants it. He may not like the fact that most Americans want it that way, but the fact remains that they do. There have certainly been protests of the MPAA (and I personally consider Jack Valenti to be the Antichrist, for many reasons), but those protests have been from a small minority of folks like us, not from the people as a whole, who still overwhelmingly support them. You can't blame the failure of adult-only movies on anything but good old American prudery.
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 13:56, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
But for the most part, he's right: there are no restrictions on nudity in movies, but the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie. French folks don't have a problem taking their kids to nice family movie that happens to have a bit of nudity in it. American parents in the heartland will consider a movie with any nudity to be for adults only, and its market will be hurt.
While technically true, that's grossly misleading. There are few legal restrictions on nudity in the movies, but there are draconian quasi-legal industry restrictions.
Instead of "the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie" the more accurate portrayal is
Any explicit sex will prevent a movie from being shown in any mainstream theater, with few exceptions.
The MPAA decides the moral code for acceptable movies with an iron fist, often demanding changes to the movie for it to get a "non-adult" rating.
Any movie they deem to be NC-17 has no financial future in U.S. movie theaters.
Cunc is the one misrepresenting the facts here: there are /no/ legal restrictions on nudity in movies of any kind, period. Yes, the MPAA rules with "an iron fist", but it is precisely because that's the way the American public wants it. He may not like the fact that most Americans want it that way, but the fact remains that they do. There have certainly been protests of the MPAA (and I personally consider Jack Valenti to be the Antichrist, for many reasons), but those protests have been from a small minority of folks like us, not from the people as a whole, who still overwhelmingly support them. You can't blame the failure of adult-only movies on anything but good old American prudery.
Yes there are: try child prOn, indecency and obscenity laws. Period. I never claimed that the American public doesn't like the way the MPAA operates. However, to believe that the current movie distribution system is the only one acceptable to the American public would be naive.
But this isn't a disgreement about facts, just which facts are important. I should have said "I think it's grossly misleading".
(The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com):
Yes there are: try child prOn, indecency and obscenity laws.
Those are not restrictions on "nudity". Nude pictures of children are perfectly legal in the US, as long as they're not engaged in sexual acts or otherwise presented as erotic. And even some that are clearly erotic are acceptable in some circumstances ("Pretty Baby" and "American Beauty" come to mind).
But this isn't a disgreement about facts, just which facts are important. I should have said "I think it's grossly misleading".
Agreed. I just thought it a bit unfair to demonize the MPAA when for the most part it is the American public itself that's the problem. Our prudery is not a case of an authoritarian minority oppressing the freedom-loving masses; it's a case of the authoritarian masses oppressing the freedom-loving minority. It is not a failure of democracy, but a natural negative consequence of it.
On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 16:38, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
(The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com):
Yes there are: try child prOn, indecency and obscenity laws.
Those are not restrictions on "nudity". Nude pictures of children are perfectly legal in the US, as long as they're not engaged in sexual acts or otherwise presented as erotic. And even some that are clearly erotic are acceptable in some circumstances ("Pretty Baby" and "American Beauty" come to mind).
Yep, there are no restrictions on nude pictures unless someone doesn't like them--or does like them. Also, while there's no federal statute on public nudity, there are plenty of local restrictions and no Constitutional protection.
C.f. Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 639-43 (1968), Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S.103, 111 (1990), Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A. But hey, this is all being hammered out by the courts.
But this isn't a disgreement about facts, just which facts are important. I should have said "I think it's grossly misleading".
Agreed. I just thought it a bit unfair to demonize the MPAA when for the most part it is the American public itself that's the problem. Our prudery is not a case of an authoritarian minority oppressing the freedom-loving masses; it's a case of the authoritarian masses oppressing the freedom-loving minority. It is not a failure of democracy, but a natural negative consequence of it.
That's one reading of the situation. Mine is that both the authoritarian minority and authoritarian masses are to blame.
On Thu, 22 May 2003 15:38:01 -0500, Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com gave utterance to the following:
(The Cunctator cunctator@kband.com):
Yes there are: try child prOn, indecency and obscenity laws.
Those are not restrictions on "nudity". Nude pictures of children are perfectly legal in the US, as long as they're not engaged in sexual acts or otherwise presented as erotic.
They seem to think differently in Texas: http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2003-04-17/feature2.html/1/index.html (The publicity and resulting outrage cause the state to back away from the case a week later).
This is getting pretty far afield from wikipedia issues, so we should try to wrap it up or bring it back to something directly relevant to wikipedia soon.
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
Agreed. I just thought it a bit unfair to demonize the MPAA when for the most part it is the American public itself that's the problem. Our prudery is not a case of an authoritarian minority oppressing the freedom-loving masses; it's a case of the authoritarian masses oppressing the freedom-loving minority.
American culture isn't prudish, it's self-contradictory and hypocritical. When I said that American is the porn capital of the world, I meant it in terms of per-capita consumption and per-capita production.
Adult entertainment is a huge and mainstream business.
"The General Motors Corporation, the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler empire."
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/23/technology/23PORN.html
So, yeah, there is prudishness, but there's also a lot of non-prudishness coupled with hypocrisy.
--Jimbo
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
While technically true, that's grossly misleading. There are few legal restrictions on nudity in the movies, but there are draconian quasi-legal industry restrictions.
Instead of "the American market is such that too much explicit sex will actually hurt the mass-market value of a movie" the more accurate portrayal is
Any explicit sex will prevent a movie from being shown in any mainstream theater, with few exceptions.
The MPAA decides the moral code for acceptable movies with an iron fist, often demanding changes to the movie for it to get a "non-adult" rating.
Any movie they deem to be NC-17 has no financial future in U.S. movie theaters.
Cunc is the one misrepresenting the facts here: there are /no/ legal restrictions on nudity in movies of any kind, period.
Assuming that TC wrote "few" instead of "no" just to cover his ass in case any restrictions did exist, this is not a misrepresentation by him. His point is that quasi-legal restrictions do exist -- even if there are few (or no) truly legal ones. (We examine this claim below.)
Yes, the MPAA rules with "an iron fist", but it is precisely because that's the way the American public wants it.
Which American public? The teenagers that want to see an "R" film but can't? No, only those segments of the American public with the quasi-legal ability to force the movie industry to their way of thinking. To wit, those segments that were able to get *Congress* interested, forcing the MPAA to adopt its quasi-legal rules in order to avoid the imposition of truly legal rules from above. They are indeed forcing their puritan views on the rest of us, in a quasi-legal fashion (big industry guns). The ratings were *not* the result of an outcry by the *public*, nor were the specific restrictions on age associated with them.
He may not like the fact that most Americans want it that way, but the fact remains that they do.
Well, most laws, like most quasi-legal means of enforcement, have respect by a significant chunk of the population. I don't know if it's a majority here or not, but that's irrelevant.
There have certainly been protests of the MPAA (and I personally consider Jack Valenti to be the Antichrist, for many reasons), but those protests have been from a small minority of folks like us, not from the people as a whole, who still overwhelmingly support them. You can't blame the failure of adult-only movies on anything but good old American prudery.
Certainly. Good old American prudery that in this case is being enforced by quasi-legal means through the MPAA. Where is the misrepresentation in Cunc's post?
Let's be more specific. TC was responding to a claim that market share for nudity is bad because people will *choose* not to see a movie with nudity. This is entirely false -- *lot* of people want to see nudity. If they could see it in a mainstream (not porn) theatre, then they would. But they can't -- that's the quasi-legal rule enforced *on* them. That this rule has widespread public support is not the issue; the fact remains that plenty of people would view the movies if they could. The loss of marketability is entirely the fault of the ratings system, which is a quasi-legal enforcement mechanism, however widely supported.
-- Toby
Can we please please PLEASE move this thread to somewhere it might be relevant, like [[Talk:MPAA ratings sytem]] or /dev/null?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Je Ĵaŭdo 22 Majo 2003 09:24, Jimmy Wales skribis:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
BTW, is it just prudery that I seldom see nudity in american movies, or are there laws against it? If so, this might become a similar problem.
America is the porn capital of the world, so I'm not sure what kind of movies you're watching. Other than broadcast television and radio, which are censored through the means of licensing, there are basically no restrictions on nudity in movies in the United States.
The movie ratings system in the United States is a voluntary self-censorship regime managed by the industry itself. Nudity tends to be limited in general-release films (as opposed to porn ;) because we're also a country of prudes and puritans.
Nudity generally leads to an "R" (restricted) rating or higher, which severely limits the audience: most theaters and rental outlets, following the voluntary rating system, won't allow underage kids to see those films without adult supervision. Some outlets may not show R-rated films *at all,* particularly in small towns. Since the most profitable segment of the movie-going audience is teenage boys, an R-rated movie is less profitable than a film that can get a lower rating and receive a bigger share of the teen audience. So, the industry tends to favor films that don't quite hit the R.
See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPAA_film_rating_system for more details on the ratings system and its history.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
Indeed, I would consider it heroic to violate local laws to post useful information on Wikipedia, such as first-hand descriptions of the acts of despotic governments, or information about how to defeat net access restrictions.
I agree. I still do not recommend that people do it, out of concern for their personal wellbeing. In some countries, it could potentially be very dangerous, and for that reason, I say that each person should follow their own conscience and do what they can.
A more tricky issue is postings that are legal elsewhere but not legal in California, such as the posting of information that is public domain in places whose legislature isn't owned by Disney. We probably have to supress such information, which is a shame.
Yes, I agree that we probably do, and that it is a shame in some cases. But usually the fact that we're doing an encyclopedia means that we aren't all that interested in posting such information, except in a context that's a pretty easy slam-dunk fair use, anyway.
Fortunately, by and large, the United States is still the most free-speech friendly nation. So it's only in some rare cases that U.S. law might be more strict than laws elsewhere.
One striking example would be information about how to 'crack' the DVD encryption software. Such information is encyclopedic, but it is also potentially illegal to post in the U.S.
--Jimbo
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take in posting potentially illegal material while in that country. But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her. (I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)
Why do you use a "she" ?
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Anthere wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take in posting potentially illegal material while in that country. But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her. (I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)
Why do you use a "she" ?
As you suspected, because you were the first French contributor to come to mind. But of course I don't mean to imply that I mean you specifically, just as writing "he" would not have implied that I meant Aoineko (the first male French contributor to come to my mind just now).
I wrote "she", thought «That "she" is because of Anthere, isn't it?», decided «Well, it's no worse than "he" and better than "ze".», and kept it. But really, I should have changed it to "they".
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
Anthere wrote:
A contributor from France can decide what risk she wants to take in posting potentially illegal material while in that country. But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia policy to stop her. (I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement with you or not.)
Why do you use a "she" ?
As you suspected, because you were the first French contributor to come to mind. But of course I don't mean to imply that I mean you specifically, just as writing "he" would not have implied that I meant Aoineko (the first male French contributor to come to my mind just now).
I wrote "she", thought «That "she" is because of Anthere, isn't it?», decided «Well, it's no worse than "he" and better than "ze".», and kept it. But really, I should have changed it to "they".
Then you would have been grammatically wrong. :-)
Ec
Eclecticology wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
But really, I should have changed it to "they".
Then you would have been grammatically wrong. :-)
I know that Ec is smiling, but if anybody wonders how to pull it off (perhaps especially people that learned English only in school), see [[en:Singular they]].
-- Toby
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
A contributor from France can decide what risk she
wants to take
in posting potentially illegal material while in
that country.
But I shouldn't use my influence on Wikipedia
policy to stop her.
(I don't know if this paragraph is in disagreement
with you or not.)
Why do you use a "she" ?
As you suspected, because you were the first French contributor to come to mind. But of course I don't mean to imply that I mean you specifically, just as writing "he" would not have implied that I meant Aoineko (the first male French contributor to come to my mind just now).
I wrote "she", thought �That "she" is because of Anthere, isn't it?�, decided �Well, it's no worse than "he" and better than "ze".�, and kept it. But really, I should have changed it to "they".
s/he is fine too :-)
That is what the user Anthere and the user Anth�re would use I guess.
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