[Foundation-l] Italian Wikipedia protest - retrospective legislation?

[WereSpielChequers]

>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:14:51 +0200
> From: "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <4E8B855B.5010804 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> WereSpielChequers, 04/10/2011 23:46:
> > If someone tried to use this law
> > to
> > force an editor  to publish a rebuttal of something posted before the
> > freeze, then surely that would be retrospective legislation?
>
> I don't see why. Web pages are permanent, they ask the
> correction/declaration to be published after the new law (there's no
> time limit for it) and you have to publish it. You're not punished for
> having published the original text.
>
> Nemo
>
>
> Webpages are only permanent if someone keeps hosting them. I can see that
if the Italian Wikipedia was back up  someone in Italy might send a note to
the WMF asking them to comply with this Italian law. But if an editor is no
longer active on the site it would be retrospective legislation to oblige
them to return to a site in 2012 and publish a rebuttal note to something
they wrote in 2006.

If it is retrospective legislation then there may an opportunity for the
opposition to appeal to the European Court.

If this legislation is passed then one option would be for the Italian
Wikipedia to be restored, but with a site notice explaining that "This site
is hosted n the USA and operates under US law rather than Italian law, click
here if you are in Italy and need to see rebuttals posted under Italian law"
. Then you could have a rebuttal namespace transcluded onto the article for
those who have said they are in Italy and therefore need to see the
rebuttals.


This blackout is bound to lead to more Italians reading and perhaps editing
other language versions of Wikipedia instead. It would be interesting to
hear from the WMF what their policy would be on IP requests from the Italian
Police, particularly if any were made re Italian editors editing other
language versions of Wikipedia.


In the meantime there may be an unusual number of  Italian editors seeking
renames from named accounts to pseudonymous ones. Would it be possible to
upgrade that process so that mailing list archives, former signatures on
talkpages and other uses of an editor's name were also amended?

WereSpielChequers