> > > > I don't believe Wikipedia could be a data controller as it has no legal > > personality, and legal personality is quite difficult to acquire when you > > set out to avoid acquiring it. > > On this point I must disagree. >
I'd be interested to hear why :-) I think also though that if editors are potentially liable, then so are legal persons that engage in similar activity. Say for instance a European Wikimedia chapter engaged with a national archive to update Wikidata with a few million records, including some on living people. Arguably both of them could be acting as data controllers on those records for the rest of the duration of Wikidata. Hmmmmm..... > > > However, even if my line of thinking is correct, I think Wikipedia's > > existing policies wouldn't need much amendment. Processing of personal > data > > is allowed so long as it complies with the various duties on data > > processors, e.g. being accurate and processed for a legitimate purpose. > > Accuracy is no defense! That's one of the chief lessons of the ECJ > opinion. And building an encyclopedia is not named as "a legitimate > purpose" by the ECJ. (If it were, all Google would have to do is > revive its own experiment in encyclopedias, Knol, but this time give > it a compatible Creative Commons license.) > > > We have quite a clear purpose in processing data - the provision of an > > encyclopedia. We already limit ourselves to truthful and accurate > coverage > > of data subjects (e.g. the BLP policy); and we already have something > > analogous to a public-interest test as to whether we process this data at > > all (the notability principle). > > Google has a clear purpose too, and it was no defense. Plus, there is > a public-interest argument in favor of eschewing the erasure of true, > accurate public data that happens to be old. > This is all the case, but the decision makes it clear that this is a question in striking a balance between the interests of the data subject (the "right to be forgotten", i.e. the ability to enjoy a private life), and the interests of others. This derives from Article 7(f) of the original directive. It also makes it clear that this balance may be struck in different places in different situations; for instance at Paragraph 81, talking about the balance of public interest in people who have taken a role in public life[1] who are arguably the sort we cover in our articles. I'd agree that there is no clarity about what would happen if someone pursued this course of action with Wikipedia, but there are many differences between our case and Google's... Chris [1] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=152065&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=95716 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
