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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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