[Foundation-l] Wikipedia disclaimers

[Platonides]

Sebastián González 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.
> 
> 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. 

Diffs? You can see in the history page [1] that it hasn't been received 
changes nor edit conflicts recently.
All changes for the last year were minor, as even non-Spanish speakers 
can see [2]

Same applies for the talk page: only minor issues (borders, interwikis...).


> 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.

I feel you have personal issues with it. Sorry if it is not, but there 
have been too many people coming to this list to complain about X done 
(wrongly [3]) on project Y.
Why haven't you noted it on the talk page? Or the Village Pump?

Moreover, which is your username? I can't find a Sebastián González on 
Spanish Wikipedia, meta, or the local mailing list.


> 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?

Maybe you're trying to get a point to introduce fair use on eswiki?
"The servers are in USA, local law is not important" has always been an 
argument for fair use, and "there is no fair use in {Spain, Venezuela, 
Uruguay...}" against it.

Which is anyway not too relevant. That Spanish Wikipedia has to comply 
with US laws isn't an excuse for not obeying the copyright laws of 
Spain, Venezuela or Argentina, when relevant. *Specially* when you're on 
those countries or a great number of your contributors are. Should we 
encourage to disobey their local law?? Maybe on certain matters, on 
totalitariam regimes... but copyright is not one of those cases.

Even more, the fact that hypothetically the WMF would win a fair use 
case settled on the US, doesn't mean that it should try to force it or 
that it would be able to support it. We should not even reach that 
point. [4]


[[es:User:Platonides]] ~~~~

1-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsabilidad&action=history
2-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ALimitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsabilidad&diff=20921118&oldid=12227601&uselang=en
3-http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version
4-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037170.html