[Foundation-l] Wikipedia disclaimers

[Mike Godwin]

While we attempt to act consistently with the laws of other  
jurisdictions, the fact that the Foundation and its projects operate  
under U.S. law requires us to conduct our affairs accordingly. This  
means that when U.S. law is inconsistent with other jurisdictions and  
requires different things from us, we are compelled to choose U.S. law  
as our guide.

This is not an unusual situation or even an imperialistic one -- every  
enterprise that operates across national borders is compelled to  
address the problem of "choice of law." (One of the things we  
routinely do in our business arrangements is decide which law applies.)

I believe the Spanish-language community is making a mistake in not  
translating English-language legal disclaimers, since even if they're  
not translated, the Foundation is compelled to obey American state and  
federal law, and it does not do other communities any good to withhold  
that fact.


--Mike



On Oct 12, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Casey Brown wrote:

> 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.