[Foundation-l] Wikipedia disclaimers

Tue Oct 14 15:39:58 UTC 2008

The issue has been discused a year ago, when it was tried to make
"Biographies of living people" an official policy at
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Discusi%C3%B3n:Votaciones/2007/Biograf%C3%ADas_de_personas_vivasHowever,
I did not explain in full detail such things because I realize
those are local issues and I did not want to bother with topics wich are
trivial for this channel. The main topics of Wikimedia projects being under
US law or not and if disclaimers have to say X things or can be made up as
users like, is worth being asked here; if this or that proposal should be
official policy at X or Y project, is not. In fact, I'm not even interested
in fair use, my main topics of edit are about history, and I can work very
well with paintings in PD.

I'm not hiding my username. I'm Belgrano at that project, and before the
username change I was Thialfi. I simply couldn't figure out how to configure
things.

Out of topic: I did consider posting the topic in there for discussion.
However, the most likely outcome of that would be the first administrator
thinking that the request is correct ad adding the text to the disclaimer,
and later one of the users who refuse to mention the the projects being
under US law would accuse me of trying to deceive he first administrator and
introduce sneak changes without it being noticed. So, before posting in
there I wanted to make sure if it's really a topic subject to local
consensus or if there is a global and official stance. I asked at the forum
in Meta (considering it would be a project-wide type of question), and from
there I had been redirected here. I doubt I would post more mails here
anyway unless redirected again, it's a complicated system and I prefer the
village pumps or talk pages. I know, those are internal issues of no concern
here, I just wanted to explain myself. I think the answers received are
enough to understand the situation I asked in the first place, so this
thread can be finished.

2008/10/13 Platonides <Platonides en gmail.com>

> 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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