On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]>wrote:
> The French Wikipedia is written in the French language, but it isn't > French. It is hosted by an American charity on servers in America (and > a few in the Netherlands, I think). French law doesn't apply. > This is quite wrong, and a dangerous fallacy to promote, Thomas. To give an example, a few months back, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka got a phone call from the German police over his addition of a pornographic video to the German article on pornography. The video he added violated German pornography law, which requires an effective age filter for explicit pornographic material. Achim wrote about his experience in the "Kurier" (the German Signpost): http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Kurier&oldid=103520132 (NSFW) He took the video out again, and the Verein helped him with a lawyer. In the end the prosecutor's office let him off, it seems because the single edit was too minor an offence for them to prosecute. But there is no question that if you live in a country, and do things in Wikipedia that are illegal in your country, you are individually liable under the laws of your country. Remember that the legal liability is always first and foremost the contributor's, and not the Foundation's. In the German case, the police and prosecutor's office came for Achim as an individual. They did not come for the WMF or Wikimedia Germany. Whether or not this is a problem for French Wikimedians working in French Wikipedia depends purely and solely on French law. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
