[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act

[Mike Godwin]

Thomas writes:

> The WMF expressing legal concerns about the stories is effectively
> identical to the WMF removing the stories. The WMF wants the stories
> gone, the stories go - that's the short of it.

That is hardly the case. It's always possible for editors to refuse to  
follow our advice.   If there's a way to compel volunteer editors to  
do anything, I haven't come across it.

> If the general counsel
> of the WMF tells you there are legal concerns regarding one of your
> articles, you delete the article, you don't have any say in the
> matter, regardless of whether or not the WMF actually demands
> deletion.

If you are under the impression that I told someone they had no choice  
but to accede to my recommendations, then you are mistaken. I took the  
trouble of explaining at some length what our legal concerns were.  
These concerns included legal protection of Wikinews and its  
individual contributors.

> That said, the WMF removing stories because of legal concerns has
> always been accepted (albeit reluctantly) by the community as
> something the WMF has to do. The WMF has a responsibility to obey the
> law, whether we like it or not. There is a big difference between
> removing the articles due to legal concerns and, as Wikileaks seems to
> claim, censoring articles critical of Wikipedia. As long as it was
> just the former (and I have no evidence to suggest otherwise), I have
> no problem with it.

That's good to hear. But in this instance the WMF did not remove  
stories.



--Mike