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

[Geoffrey Plourde]

I fail to see why this is so controversial. I serve as an editor for a student paper. If the administration sees legal issues with something, it is their prerogative to request removal or rewriting of stories. The publisher of any major news publication has the same power. Without this power, the newspaper would be shut down due to lawsuits.  
Although some people here scream censorship, I would like to thank everyone who worked on removing the libel from our site for their vigilance which keeps the doors open and the servers on.


----- Original Message ----
From: Ryan <wiki.ral315 at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 8:13:31 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger of losing immunity under the Communications Decency Act

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we all may be missing the point here, however. Regardless of
> the legalities, what possible business could WMF have in keeping
> Wikinews from publishing stories that are critical of WMF? Is this not
> about as clear a conflict of interest as you get?
>
> Personally, I don't agree that Virgin Killer is child porn (or porn at
> all, I see nothing sexual at all about the image), but the fact that I
> disagree with the story makes me no less disturbed to see it getting
> quashed. I'm glad for Wikileaks, this type of thing is totally
> unacceptable, and I'm doubly disappointed to see it from WMF. (Doesn't
> Wikinews have some type of "not censored" policy? Does that only apply
> if they don't dare criticize Wikimedia?)
>

I've seen the deleted article.  I don't feel comfortable discussing
specifics, but there's no doubt in my mind that it was libelous (and on a
purely personal note, it was a horribly written article).  I would hope that
administrators, and by extension, perhaps the Foundation, would act to
remove any articles that looked like that.

The Wikimedia Foundation has not censored Wikinews on previous stories that
criticized them (the Marsden affair, for example).  When I first heard about
this, I was shocked; after reading the article itself, I realized why it was
deleted (and would have deleted it myself, honestly).

-- 
[[User:Ral315]]
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l