[Foundation-l] Wikipedia disclaimers

[Casey Brown]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Sebastián González
<daleboca782 at gmail.com>wrote:

> As I have been informed at Meta, the legal disclaimers of the wikipedia in
> english were formulated by a lawyer of the foundation, and it's content is
> beyond discussion or consensus of the community of users. If one day
> there's
> the need to modify something of it, it would be decided by the foundation.
>

The Meta discussion referred to is <
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Disclaimers>.  I am not sure
if Alex was considered a "lawyer of the foundation".  He may have just
served in an advisory capacity and that document could have been written
from a community member's perspective.


>
> By logic, the same thing would apply to the disclaimers of all wikipedias,
> wich are traductions of the one in english. But are those disclaimers
> binding documents in the legal sense, or just of informative purposes? The
> GNU free documentation license states "In case of a disagreement between
> the
> translation and the original version of this License or a notice or
> disclaimer, the original version will prevail", does something similar
> applies between disclaimers of wikipedia?
>
> Let's provide a working example of this. The disclaimer of the wikipedia in
> spanish, located at
>
> http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsabilidad
> ,
> does not include any mention to the paragraph "Jurisdiction and
> legality
> of content" of the version in english, wich states that the database is
> maintained in reference to the protections afforded under local and federal
> law of the state of Florida, in the United States. Far from being just a
> part that was missing due to an incomplete translation, I have seen that
> some users, including some admins, deliberately refuse to acknowledge the
> authority of US law over the content of wikipedia, either as a plot to
> prevent consensus about non-free content from ever happening or as a
> mistaken display of patriotism. As far as I understand (but correct me if
> I'm wrong) being written in spanish and having a huge majority of admins
> and
> users from spanish speaking countries rather than from the US do not erase
> the ties with the US and turn the laws of Spain, Argentina, Venezuela or
> other spanish speaking countries into the only ones the project would
> answer
> to.
>
> What's the situation, then? Can those things be done, or does the law of
> the
> US apply to all projects regardless of users liking it or not? Can wikis in
> non-english languajes be allowed to interpret and write the legal
> disclaimer
> as they see fit, or should a version written or supervised by the
> foundation
> be enforced?
>

(CC'ing to Mike to make sure he gets a look at this.)

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

---
Note:  This e-mail address is used for mailing lists.  Personal emails sent
to
this address will probably get lost.