[WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

Wed Aug 17 17:40:19 UTC 2005

Fastfission wrote:
> If images which would very likely count as
> "obscene" under that particular state law (Florida?) were able to be
> X-ed out (that is, their presence would be visible, even though their
> content would not be) by default, and could be "enabled" by people who
> swore that they were not minors (or didn't live in the U.S.), wouldn't
> that solve a few problems at once? Those who are worried about seeing
> a nipple wouldn't by default, while those who wanted to see them could
> easily do so, and instead of doing it under the guise of someone's
> projected "decency", we were doing it simply to comply with U.S. law
> (blame  U.S. prudery on this all you want, but I'm betting laws of a
> similar sort, though with different boundaries set, exist in most
> countries).

I'm sorry but I think it bears repeating firmly and often that a nipple
showing is in absolutely no way illegal in the United States.  We could
show full-blown mainstream pornography on the main page of Wikipedia 24
hours a day and not be in violation of any laws in the United States.

It is pretty difficult to come up with something which is legally
"obscene" by US standards in the context of Wikipedia.  And our own
internal processes seem so far quite adequate to keep us very far from that.

One thing I like to emphasize in this context is that sound editorial
judgment is not the same thing as censorship.  We don't show full-blown
mainstream pornography on the front page of wikipedia as a matter of
editorial taste and judgment, not out of concern with censorship law.

> An
> additional thought which occurred to me is that I'm fairly sure a
> federal law was passed not too long ago which requires age
> verification information for nude models to be hosted by the website
> hosting their pictures (proof that they are at least 18 years old). If
> that's the case, that's another unpleasant legal/technical thing to
> think about.

I do think that this law may have some applicability, but it does *not*
apply to models who are merely nude.  It applies, and I would have to
look it up again to get the exact language, to models engaging in
specific explicit activity -- I don't think we have any images of this,
but this law could be used to argue that we can't host photographs on
[[autofellatio]] unless I'm willing to keep documentation on file from
the models (and I'm not).  But this does not apply to drawings, which is
what we have there now, for better or worse.

--Jimbo