There have been a bunch of items in my Twitter feed about how the Italian Wikipedia has shut down in response to a proposed repressive law regarding mandatory takedowns of allegedly defamatory online material in Italy. I have some problems with such a move, as it sets a precedent of having a particular language edition of Wikipedia tied to an uncomfortable degree with the politics of one country just because that's the primary place the language is spoken. It's always been true that the separate editions of Wikipedia are by language, not country. The Chinese Wikipedia keeps operating despite the repressive censorship of China, and if that country chooses to block it, that's their problem. English Wikipedia doesn't belong to England, or America, or any other English-speaking country, though the fact that the primary servers are in the USA does force it to comply to U.S. law. Unless there are servers in Italy, the Italian Wikipedia isn't compelled to follow any Italian law, though there could be consequences for any Italy-based participants if they don't, including the possibility of individuals there being held responsible for what they write or fail to take down, or possible mandatory blockage of the site in that country if they choose to go the "Great Firewall" route. I remember the German Wikipedia being affected at one point by a court injunction, but that only shut down a redirected .de domain, not the site itself as a subdomain of US-registered wikipedia.org. -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l