[WikiEN-l] Two issues here: what is legal to have on the server and what is legal in the user's nation

[Geoff Burling]

On Thu, 15 May 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Toby wrote:
> > The "international" (that is, non-English) Wikipedias
> > are also subject only to US and (I think) California law.
> > That's where they're located, after all.
> > (Although suggestions have been made in the past
> > to self-censor [[fr:]] and [[zh:]]
> > in order to prevent the governments of France and the PRC
> > from declaring it illegal to *view* them,
> > which isn't exactly the same thing.)
>
> IANAL
>
> Ahem. If it is illegal for user x to do a and b in the country they are
> contributing from, then that user should /not/ do that!
>
> General comments to all:
>
> If it is illegal in your nation to do something that would otherwise be legal
> in California, then you are still taking a personal risk if you break your
> own nation's laws. The simple fact that the server is in California does not
> shield you from the laws of your own nation.
>
> But what is legal for Wikipedia to have on its server in San Diego is really
> only a matter of California/United States law (as Toby points out).
>
> I don't think the first part of this point gets stressed often enough.
>
> Of course, what is "appropriate" is a different matter and is largely dictated
> by consensus and standing policy (both Wikipedia wide and language specific).
>
> <devil's advocate>
> It is here where an interesting question arises; should particular languages
> have /added/ restrictions across their own language version of Wikipedia that
> go beyond California/US law in order to make texts written in French, for
> example, legal to have on a server in France?
>
> Wouldn't that make the texts more useful to French-speaking peoples (well, at
> least the French speakers in France)?
> </devil's advocate>
>
> I would argue that this is a dangerous idea because then the laws of
> potentially every nation on earth could have veto power over what we have on
> Wikipedia just to make it theoretically possible to have our text usable as
> is and hosted on a server in each of those nations. The result of that would
> be massive censorship in order to meet the lowest common denominator.
>
> IMO, we should keep things simple and only concern ourselves with these two
> things (as far as the legal issue goes):
>
> 1) What is legal for any one user to do in the nation they are submitting
> from.
> 2) What is legal to have on our server in California (this applies to
> everything we all submit; all text/media must be legal under California/US
> law).
>
> Both of the above factors limit what we each can individually submit. So for
> example; a user writing from Germany has to respect restrictions set forth by
> German law and US law in what they submit while a user writing from Australia
> has to do the same in respect to Australian and US law.
>
> Hm. This concept should be on a general disclaimer or something....
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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