[Foundation-l] Wikipedia disclaimers

[Bence Damokos]

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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<http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Limitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsabilidad&action=history2-http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ALimitaci%C3%B3n_general_de_responsabilidad&diff=20921118&oldid=12227601&uselang=en3-http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version4-http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-January/037170.html>
>
>
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I believe the WMF has a policy on the copyright issue (
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy) solving the
copyright question.

Do we close the original disclaimer question that it is Wikipedia-edition
specific, and not a WMF document that should be the same in all languages,
or at least referred to as the official version?

- Bence Damokos