[Wikipedia-l] French net censorship law

[Yann Forget]

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Hi Jimbo and all,

Le Wednesday 14 January 2004 14:27, Jimmy Wales a écrit :
> How might this bill affect Wikipedia, if I go through with plans to
> set up a French nonprofit?
>
> http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/C1F6A082562EB682CC256E160006A4
>8E?OpenDocument
>
> The portion that concerns me is that "Internet access providers" (but
> what is the definition of that in the bill?) will be obligated to
> filter "illegal content", which has a much wider scope in France than
> in the US, including "material excusing crimes against humanity".

Yes, this law project is very bad. Obviously French politicians understand 
very little about the Internet. :o(
However this law project is not yet written in the books.

1. There is quite a big protest from webmasters and non profit organisations  
going on now against it. But this has meet little answer from politicians 
upto now.
2. Since today big ISPs have started to protest as well, mainly because it 
would cost them millions to check everything according to this law project. 
Probably they will have more weight.
3. A similar attempt was made a few years back, but was dismissed by the 
constitutional court (it was contrary to the constitution). I except this one 
to meet the same fate. (I think it is even worse that the previous one.)

> Currently, if the French government were to find material on Wikipedia
> not to their liking, they would have little recourse against either
> me, the Wikimedia Foundation, or the French end users who wrote the
> material.  I am in the U.S., the Wikimedia Foundation is in the U.S.,
> and therefore I can freely ignore the judgments of French courts.
>
> French end users are protected by this arrangement as well -- in order
> for the French government to pursue an end user, they will need to
> pierce the veil of anonymity given by Wikipedia usernames.  Of course,
> I would completely ignore any court order from France to hand over
> such information.
>
> On the other hand, if we had a French mirror operating under the
> auspices of a French nonprofit subsidiary, that subsidiary could be
> legally liable in such matters, thus putting us all at risk.
>
> Perhaps this is all merely of academic concern -- Wikipedia is
> self-consciously uncontroversial to a large extent.  We don't advocate
> anything, by design.  Likely the law would not be abused to the extent
> that Wikipedia would become a target.  But I do know that French users
> have often expressed concern that this article or that might be a
> violation of French law.  I don't have an opinion about the realism of
> such concerns.

Any way, we will need to check that the content of Wikipedia is valid under 
French law before setting a mirror in France. I am mainly concerned about 
images put under "fair use" as the law is quite different in France about 
this.

As long as a mirror in France would not improve the availibility of Wikipedia 
here, there is little reason to set up such a mirror. And as I understand 
what I read in wikitech-l, it would not help the current situation.

> And so that's why I ask.  As we move towards a European organization
> and European subsidiary, what concerns should we have as to the proper
> location of the organization?

OMO the main objectives of a French subsidiary would be helping to promote 
Wikipedia and collect funds. We have already three more requests for talks. 
And we are getting more and more interests from schools and universities.

> --Jimbo

Yann
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