[Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2009/3/2 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> 2009/3/2 Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com>:
>
>
>> Two recent examples from Polish Wikipedia:
>> *A sportsmen had anitdoping case around 5 years ago, when he was 18.
>> There is good source of this information (his own interwiev in sport's
>> magazine in which he appologises for taking an illegal drug). Now the
>> guy is saing that it was all forgotten by mainstream media, he was
>> already punished for this (6 months break)  but he is now trying to
>> get new contract and Wikipedia entry on him may destroy the deal.
>> Therefore he ask for removing this info or his entire bio...
>> *A pop singer manager wants to remove the birthday of his starllet,
>> because she is (probably) around 30 but her current image show her as
>> "almost teenager". The birhtday is sourced by "Who is Who in Poland",
>> paper eddtion - but it was removed from electronic version, and they
>> also manged to remove it from all other web-pages.
>
>
> If those were answered any way other than "no, go away" (however
> politely phrased), then that's just wrong.
>

Yes. They were answered in such a way. Bu it does not solve the
problem from legal POV, and when you make such an answer you are - at
least in Poland at some legal risk. In Poland there is a law that a
person can always ask for removing his/her personal data from any
electronic database (except govermental ones). In the second case the
info about drugs is not "personal data" but in the first one is
(birthday). In the first case we have just recieived a formal request
from the starllet's solicitor to remove her birthday based on the
"personal data" law. Although Wikipedia servers are fortunetally not
in Poland, the "database operator" which in this case may mean the
editor who added this birthday should remove this birthday or he/she
is commiting a kind of minor crime. This is just a practical example
how legal POV might be in some cases different than general BLP policy
writen and voted by local project's communities.


-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html