[WikiEN-l] WikiProject Decency

Wed Aug 17 22:24:14 UTC 2005

On 8/17/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 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.

Well, I'm sure you mean that (about the nipple) with certain
qualifications, but I understand your point. Looking at the law in
particular more specifically, it seems to have exceptions for
educational purposes, which would rule out any problem anyway.

> 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.

Well, there is a rather crude one of a woman with a vibrator on that
decency page, though I imagine it will be deleted soon anyway as its
copyright information is dubious and incomplete (it was simply labled
"public domain" without explanation). But it is what sparked this
question to mind in particular.

But anyway, thank you for the clarifications -- I had a feeling you
would know a bit about this realm of legal information. ;-)

FF