[WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

[Ryan Delaney]

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- Ryan

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Fastfission wrote:
>  
>
>>If images which would very likely count as
>>"obscene" under that particular state law (Florida?) were able to be
>>X-ed out (that is, their presence would be visible, even though their
>>content would not be) by default, and could be "enabled" by people who
>>swore that they were not minors (or didn't live in the U.S.), wouldn't
>>that solve a few problems at once? Those who are worried about seeing
>>a nipple wouldn't by default, while those who wanted to see them could
>>easily do so, and instead of doing it under the guise of someone's
>>projected "decency", we were doing it simply to comply with U.S. law
>>(blame  U.S. prudery on this all you want, but I'm betting laws of a
>>similar sort, though with different boundaries set, exist in most
>>countries).
>>    
>>
>
>I'm sorry but I think it bears repeating firmly and often that a nipple
>showing is in absolutely no way illegal in the United States.  We could
>show full-blown mainstream pornography on the main page of Wikipedia 24
>hours a day and not be in violation of any laws in the United States.
>
>It is pretty difficult to come up with something which is legally
>"obscene" by US standards in the context of Wikipedia.  And our own
>internal processes seem so far quite adequate to keep us very far from that.
>
>One thing I like to emphasize in this context is that sound editorial
>judgment is not the same thing as censorship.  We don't show full-blown
>mainstream pornography on the front page of wikipedia as a matter of
>editorial taste and judgment, not out of concern with censorship law.
>
>  
>
>>An
>>additional thought which occurred to me is that I'm fairly sure a
>>federal law was passed not too long ago which requires age
>>verification information for nude models to be hosted by the website
>>hosting their pictures (proof that they are at least 18 years old). If
>>that's the case, that's another unpleasant legal/technical thing to
>>think about.
>>    
>>
>
>I do think that this law may have some applicability, but it does *not*
>apply to models who are merely nude.  It applies, and I would have to
>look it up again to get the exact language, to models engaging in
>specific explicit activity -- I don't think we have any images of this,
>but this law could be used to argue that we can't host photographs on
>[[autofellatio]] unless I'm willing to keep documentation on file from
>the models (and I'm not).  But this does not apply to drawings, which is
>what we have there now, for better or worse.
>
>--Jimbo
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>  
>