[WikiEN-l] Fair use in the UK

[Jimmy Wales]

Nathan Russell wrote:
> Jimbo, to what extent do we need to respect the policies of other
> nations, and which other nations?  No offense is meant to the many UK
> folks on this list, but I would not want wikipedia to have to remove all
> content that the Chinese or Saudi government objected to.

First, it's important to differentiate between content-neutral
restrictions and content-based restrictions.  There may be some
overlap, but I think in the vast majority of cases, the restrictions
we face will be largely one or the other.

Content-based restrictions we must ignore whenever they conflict with
our NPOV mission.  If a government objects to our work on political
grounds, that's tough for them.  We are very strongly protected by the
United States government in this matter.

Some Content-based restrictions we may end up obeying, not out of
respect for laws which violate the freedom of expression, but as a
consequence of our NPOV mission.  Both France and Germany have laws
restricting the freedom of speech in various ways, but we are (in my
opinion) unlikely to run afoul of those anyway, because we are an
encyclopedia with an NPOV policy.

For example, a British newspaper distributed in France was fined for
calling Jacques Chirac a worm.  That's an inexcusable violation of
human rights on the part of the French government, but it doesn't seem
likely to cause us any trouble since we srupulously avoid making ALL
controversial claims.  We would, of course, report on the flap, in a
neutral manner, but French law is not (to my knowledge) an obstacle to
that.

Similarly, Germany has laws against some forms of expression relating
to Naziism, but again, to my knowledge, so long as we stick to our
NPOV mission, we aren't going to come close to violating those laws.
(And, again, if we do, then we must ignore German law.)

For content-neutral restrictions, for example extremely narrow fair
use provisions, we will have to make some judgment calls, and we may
have to be creative.  We want to preserve maximal freedom for
downstream users, while at the same time not hampering our NPOV and
encyclopedic mission.  For the most part, we can obey such
restrictions without compromising our mission, since the restrictions
are content-neutral.

Is that explanation and distinction helpful?

I think it's a mistake to think that British limitations on fair use
that may be slightly (or greatly) more restrictive that U.S. law are
in anything like the same category as speech restrictions in North
Korea or China or Iran or Saudi Arabia, etc..

They aren't even in the same category as speech restrictions in
Germany and France.

--Jimbo