[WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

Wed Dec 7 00:54:51 UTC 2005

geni wrote:

>If you post something libilus under US law (which is the only law that
>matters) and the person finds it fast enough they can get a court
>order and get the relivant server logs from wikipedia. If you don't
>log in then I'm afaraid we can't protect you from being stupid. You
>can't expect the foundation not to respect a US court order. As a
>result the fact is that under certian conditions posting something
>false on wikipedia could get you into legal trouble. It is important
>people understand this.
>
>
>The reference to authoritarian countries is a red herring. Assumeing
>you avoid local monitoring it is only US law you have to worry about
>because only US law affects the foundation.
>  
>
It isn't a red herring, because I'm not talking about the possibility 
that a court order could be made for our current logs.  I'm talking 
specifically about Mr. Seigenthaler's calls for us to add additional 
logging facility specifically for the purpose of making it easier to 
trace anonymous contributors, which would be a very bad idea.  We can't 
guarantee people's anonymity, but we shouldn't---contrary to his 
suggestion---go out of our way to make contributors more easily 
traceable back to their real identities.

-Mark