[Foundation-l] and what if...

Fri Dec 12 21:27:01 UTC 2008

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2008/12/12 Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
>>
>> > We all perfectly know that if this particular image was borderline,
>> > there are images or texts that are illegal in certain countries. I am
>> > not even speaking of China here, but good old westernish countries.
>> > In some countries, it may be sexually-oriented picts. In others, it may
>> > be violence. In others yet, some texts we host are forbidden. I am not
>> > going to cite any examples publicly ;-)
>>
>> Well in fact the picture blocked by IWF was not illegal.
>
>
> That's quite unclear.  I'd say the image *is* illegal, but that it's far too
> widespread for the law to be enforced.
>
>
>> I think we
>> should complain that such the organisation like IWF should follow the
>> freedom of speach rules of their countries, which means that they
>> cannot legally block the content which has not been found illegal.
>
>
> If that was the rule they might as well not exist.  The vast majority of
> child pornography hasn't been subject to a legal ruling.
>
> In fact, under the scenario you describe the sexual abuse of minors would
> only *increase*, because new child porn would be created whenever old child
> porn was "found illegal".

Let's take a step back.

This incident arose because of a third party making a judgement call
about content which was an album cover by an at-the-time leading rock
group, had been published fairly continuously for 30-ish years, and
which was presumably well known to legal authorities by dint of being
very clearly a public publication.

The actual details here fairly scream out that one must conclude that
there's a presumption of legality for the photo in question, whether
it's offensive or not.

Someone unaware of the history might legitimately conclude differently
looking at it.  However, we're not unaware of the history, and the
recent kerfuffle was clearly by a group who must have viewed the
Wikipedia page prior to blocking and have no way to claim plausible
deniability of the history of the image in question.  Given the
article contents, they were either negligent about considering the
history, or malignly attempting to go beyond their mandate as
understood and communicated.

In a situation where an image is borderline, and no clear historical
significance and/or presumption of legality can be established,
there's nothing wrong with Wikipedians removing images.  If someone
later establishes that the image is well known and hasn't been deemed
illegal we can revisit the removal decision and, if appropriate,
restore.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com