[WikiEN-l] Press coverage listing the HD-DVD key- Clarification
Philippe Beaudette
philippebeaudette at gmail.com
Fri May 4 19:06:12 UTC 2007
After re-reading, I want to post a clarification - I quickly sent a "me too" post, while commenting that I hate them. I do, and this has demonstrated why. While agreeing with the general content of George's message, there are parts of it with which I do not agree, and I should have pointed that out clearly. I do not believe Anthony is being ridiculous - I believe he's arguing a point with which I do not agree. However, I don't think it's ridiculous. It was called to my attention that I may have endorsed that word, which I do not. I apologize to anyone whom I may have offended.
Philippe
----- Original Message -----
From: George Herbert
To: English Wikipedia
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 1:37 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Press coverage listing the HD-DVD key
On 5/4/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Just to point out, we're here to write a FREE encyclopedia. If it
> turns out the **AA goons are going to successfully sue into oblivion
> anyone distributing the encyclopedia, then there's a good argument the
> encyclopedia is no longer free.
Look, don't be ridiculous. It's not the case that we're transitioning
from a state where it would be legal for us to post anything we want
to completely unrestricted, to one where suddenly there are now
restrictions.
There have always been restrictions. We couldn't legally post Child
Porn images to illustrate the article on it. We don't let people
publish BLP libel or unfounded statements. We don't publish a
life-size scan of a dollar bill on the Dollar page (it's about 1.5x
"real size", presumably due to the size related restrictions). We
don't have actual detailed nuclear bomb plans up on [[Nuclear weapon
design]] article.
There have been no crusades to overturn those restrictions.
The fight over decrypt code was lost in the 2600 case [[Universal v.
Reimerdes]], as offensive as that is to you and me and probably nearly
everyone else here on-list. The Internet rather uniquely allows
responsible organizations (who could be sued to death for statutory
damages by the MPAA and others) to report accurately without the code,
and for irresponsible organizations and individuals (for whom the
statutory damages may hold little or no practical effect, as they have
too little assets) to provide the DMCA-banned code anyways, and
countries which don't recognize the DMCA to host the materials without
even those restrictions.
We are an organization that would be in terrible trouble if sued for
statutory damages for a thousand infractions of DMCA.
Please don't oversimplify this to a white and black case.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
More information about the WikiEN-l
mailing list