On 8/17/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)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