[Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Ray Saintonge]

On 03/09/12 9:39 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 2:16 AM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge at telus.net>  wrote:
>
>> On 03/08/12 2:20 AM, Theo10011 wrote:
>>
>>> The other issue is morality and responsibility. I don't think any
>>> executives or board members should make a statement about that video. It's
>>> a stated policy that they are not responsible for the content on the
>>> project. To hold them legally or morally responsible, for what 100,000
>>> contributors might do at any given point, is unrealistic and unreasonable.
>>> They can not be held liable for actions of vandals, as much as of
>>> community
>>> members who upload media in good faith. Depending on how you perceive
>>> this,
>>> who does have some responsibility is the community itself. It governs
>>> itself, has its own rules about content, WMF regularly points to it in
>>> cases of content dispute.
>>>
>>>
>>>   This raises an important point about the role of the board, and of
>> staff.  The status of an ISP implies blindness to content.  The more it
>> assumes editorial rights, the more it puts its role as an ISP into
>> question.  It does not know about these contents until it receives a
>> properly formulated demand to take something down, at which point it must
>> act according to law.  Third parties who just happen to feel offended by
>> some material tend to approach these matters with a strong bias, which may
>> or may not reflect the reality of the law. Such people need to be informed
>> of the proper legal channels with the assurance of knowing that management
>> will abide with the law without itself being a tryer of the facts.
> Why is it that the instinctive Wikimedia response to a problem is always
> burying one's head in the sand and hoping that the problem will go
> away? For goodness' sake. Sue has blogged her views about editorial
> judgment. The Board is in the habit of passing resolutions on project
> content. And in one of these, the Board decided last year that we would
> have an image filter, and instructed Sue to install one. To turn around now
> and say that all of this is something the Board can't even so much as
> *comment* on, when they've gave specific management instructions on this
> last year, is ludicrous.
>
It's not at all question of burying one's head in the sand. It's a 
question of the communities solving their own problems. Serious 
injustices are a common occurrence in the communities, but a community 
is diminished when it has to run to mother-WMF's apron strings to solve 
its problems. Some communities will implement filters, others not; 
that's fine. Eventually, each community will find its own balanced solution.

Ray