Wish he would have documented a bit more clearly what he's talking about, though.

I just discovered to my surprise - actually, horror - that Wikimedia Commons hosts illegal pedophilia. For shame.

At least he made it clear that this is illegal pedophilia, as opposed to the "legal" kind.

Tweet it from the mountaintops, Larry!

Wish he would have documented a bit more clearly what he's talking about, though.

Actually he leaves it ambiguous whether he is referring to content or conduct.

Mr. Sanger clarified to Avicennasis:

I just discovered to my surprise - actually, horror - that Wikimedia Commons hosts illegal pedophilia. For shame.

@lsanger: Email me the link and I will have it removed if your right. Avicennasis@gmail.com

@Avicennasis Check out the "Pedophilia" category.

@lsanger Looks clean to me, including subcat. Must of been deleted already.

@Avicennasis No; it's still there.

Let's see if the FBI thinks the contents of Wikimedia Commons' "Pedophilia" category is "artistic." I don't think so.

@lsanger Law only covers real photos, not drawings/paintings. It's all legal in the United States See the DOJ report: http://bit.ly/dhMzMo

@lsanger If you want to report to FBI for a second opinion, feel free: http://bit.ly/5rx3gz or call 1-800-843-5678 :http://bit.ly/TByp7

Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly produces, distributes, receives, or possesses with intent to distribute, a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that—
(1)
(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) is obscene; or
(2)
(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and
(B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;
or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be subject to the penalties provided in section 2252A (b)(1), including the penalties provided for cases involving a prior conviction.

Whoever violates, or attempts or conspires to violate, paragraph (1), (2), (3), (4), or (6) of subsection (a) shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 5 years and not more than 20 years, but, if such person has a prior conviction under this chapter, section 1591, chapter 71section 1591, chapter 71, chapter 109A, or chapter 117, or under section 920 of title 10 (article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), or under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward, or the production, possession, receipt, mailing, sale, distribution, shipment, or transportation of child pornography, or sex trafficking of children, such person shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not less than 15 years nor more than 40 years.

Does Sanger live under a bushel basket of some kind? Sanger may be as out of it as Jimbo, if he thinks this "Category" on Commons is worth tweeting, but Benjiboi's work on the Crisco article, never made it to his radar screen.

@lsanger Law only covers real photos, not drawings/paintings. It's all legal in the United States See the DOJ report: http://bit.ly/dhMzMo

Don't like url-hiding links, so I have no idea what that link goes to.

Don't like url-hiding links, so I have no idea what that link goes to.

I find it amusing though that we have a wiki-admin saying the law doesn't cover drawing/paintings, only to have Greg Kohs cite a law that says it does cover drawings and paintings and any other "visual depiction".

But given the belief this is all legal, it strikes me that the acid test would be for Jimbo, Avicennasis or anyone else who holds this position to have one of those images put onto a t-shirt and re-enter the USA wearing it -- preferably returning from one of the unfortunately notorious south-east asian 'sex tourist' countries. Bonus points for true devotion given out if they also carry a laptop computer containing the entire contents of the Commons category, and proudly display it all to the border people.

"Money, meet mouth."

I asked someone who knows about doujinshi and hentai ... and they said that Japanese get away with having porn of underaged characters by claiming they are over 18 in a disclaimer. I guess it would be hard to verify a cartoon character's age if they aren't real.

Hopefully The Sangster will come to know about Wikipedia Review and be willing to enter the fray on such issues as the pedophiliac and extreme sexual agendas turning the Wkipedia into their chosen Pornopedia.

Has anyone on this site had direct contact before?

I have been thinking about this recently and I suppose that arguable the imagery could at a stretch be taken symbolically, in that the male readers are looking for the characteristics of immaturity, naivety and submissivity in the women they seek. But, sadly, largely I suspect such a view is just desperate liberal bollocks and they are actually just fantasizing about doing the most utterly objectionable and disgusting sexual perversions to hyper sexualized female children. I spoke recently to one male individual whose school leaders encouraged teachers to date children from amongst the pupils.

Well, my example was just about your average Pokemon/Digimon/whatevermonJapanesepornstuff there is. I guess they could say the characters are doing it for humor? I don't know. Maybe those shows aren't really specific about how old Ash and Pikachu are so when they do it it isn't illegal.

I don't really want to know. ;/

Laws have been enacted to criminalize "obscene images of children, no matter how they are made," for preventing abuse.[34] An argument is that obscene fictional images portray children as sex objects, thereby contributing to child sexual abuse. This argument has been disputed by the claim that there is no scientific basis for that connection,[35] and that restricting sexual expression in drawings or animated games and videos might actually increase the rate of sexual crime by eliminating a harmless outlet for desires that could motivate crime.[9] This is exemplified in a case involving a man from Virginia who asserted at his arrest that after viewing lolicon at a public library, he had quit collecting real child pornography and switched to lolicon.[36]

Cultural critic Hiroki Azuma said that very few readers of lolicon manga commit crimes. In the otaku culture, lolicon is the "most convenient [form of rebellion]" against society.[8]

Milton Diamond and Ayako Uchiyama observe a strong correlation between the dramatic rise of pornographic material in Japan from the 1970s onwards and a dramatic decrease in reported sexual violence, including crimes by juveniles and assaults on children under 13. They cite similar findings in Denmark and West Germany. In their summary, they state that the concern that countries with widespread availability of sexually explicit material would suffer increased rates of sexual crimes was not validated and that the reduction of sexual crimes in Japan during that period may have been influenced by a variety of factors they had described in their study.[10]

Sharon Kinsella observed an increase in unsubstantiated accounts of schoolgirl prostitution in the media in the late 1990s, and speculated that these unproven reports developed in counterpoint to the increased reporting on comfort women. She speculated that, "It may be that the image of happy girls selling themselves voluntarily cancels out the other guilty image."[8]

Read this. Then you'll know....the Wikipedia version.

All, you may be interested to know that I just reported the Wikimedia
Foundation to the FBI. Here is what I sent to them:

I really regret having to report this, but I feel I must. My name is Dr.
Larry Sanger and I am widely known as co-founder of Wikipedia, the
encyclopedia project. I have long since departed the organization, over
disagreements about editorial and management policy. I have also since
founded a more responsible project, Citizendium.org, and a teacher-edited
non-profit directory of preK-12 educational videos, WatchKnow.org. Given my
position of influence on matters related to Wikipedia, though I'm no longer
associated with it, I feel I have a moral obligation to make the following
report. The language of 18 USC §1466A makes it sound like I have a legal
obligation as well, so here goes.

I believe Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/),
owned and
hosted by the California-based Wikimedia Foundation, may be knowingly
distributing child pornography. The clearest instances I found (I did not
want to look for long) are linked from [deleting link; it's a category about
pedophilia] and [link deleted; it's a category about something called
lolicon]. I don't know if there is any more, but I wouldn't be surprised if
there is--the content on the various Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia
and Wikimedia Commons and various others, are truly vast.

You can see on [the history of the category page] that the page has existed
for three years. Considering that Eric Moeller, a high-level Wikipedia
manager, is well known for his views in defense of pedophilia
(http://mashable.com/2008/05/08/erik-moeller-pedophilia/), surely the
existence of this page must have come to the attention of those with the
legal responsibility for the Wikimedia projects.

In my non-lawyer's opinion, it looks like this violates 18 USC §1466A(2)(A).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1466A.html Perhaps the defense of this
will be that the depictions are exempted due to §1466A(2)(B), i.e., the
Wikimedia Foundation may argue that the images have some artistic value. I
guess that's for you and maybe the courts to decide.

There are probably many copies of such images online. If there is a reason
to hold the Wikimedia Foundation, however, is that they purport to be a
reliable source of information. Moreover, a recent discussion on EDTECH,
the educational technologists' list, indicates that some school district
filter managers are not filtering such smut from the view of teachers and
students. See:
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?...user=&pw=&month
=1004 It was actually in response to comments on that discussion that I
decided to look into this situation myself.

I don't envy the FBI the task of regulating the seedy underside of the
Internet, and I doubt this is very high on your list of priorities. But I
want to be on the record stating that this is wrong and should be
investigated.

Not to defend Commons (I think I've made it clear that it hosts some clearly bad things), but you would have to argue in court that those drawings lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." The Foundation would argue it is using those drawings for educational purposes. If an illustrator did some work for novel "Lolita," would he be found guilty under the law? I think you have to look at the context of how the drawing is being used before determining if it is promoting pedophilia or merely representing the act. One of the things I was arguing about in the other thread about Commons was that it could be misconstrued as anything but "educational" with its myriad of penis pictures. How can you explain that you need so many representations of a penis, pedophilia, etc. for "educational" purposes? Assume Good Faith does not extend to courts of law.

Legally speaking, can the Foundation or Commons be held liable for hosting any illegal images despite Section 230 or would the uploader and/or illustrator be the only ones to be punished?

Commons is not a legal entity per se, and the Foundation is the host that is covered under Section 230. They are immune from liability to the extent that they were unaware of the images. Once they are informed of the presence of illegal or defamatory content, they must remove it post haste to remain immune.

No, I'm afraid this is either a distancing move or an experiment of some sort on Mr. Sanger's part. I could be wrong of course, but if it's just a publicity stunt, that's fine, but it suggests he isn't being very realistic about the nature of modern public relations.

Moral high-ground notwithstanding if I were dropping a dime on somebody, especially to a government agency, I'd use an assumed name plus a public phone or computer, and I wouldn't tell a soul (as per [[Category:Lessons I've learned from OSHA]]).

Commons is not a legal entity per se, and the Foundation is the host that is covered under Section 230. They are immune from liability to the extent that they were unaware of the images.

Once they are informed of the presence of illegal or defamatory content, they must remove it post haste to remain immune. Delaying or attempting to hinder a subsequent investigation would be obstruction of justice, which I believe is a felony.

No, I'm afraid this is either a distancing move or an experiment of some sort on Mr. Sanger's part. I could be wrong of course, but if it's just a publicity stunt, that's fine, but it suggests he isn't being very realistic about the nature of modern public relations. If it's just a revenge ploy, that's fine too - Wikimedia certainly deserves it! - but it won't bring about any positive change in Wikiland. If it even gets any media legs at all, it'll just make them circle the wagons until the whole thing blows over, and then it's back to business as usual.

...so why is he doing this now? Is he really trying to make us believe he's only now noticing there's a problem? That's kind of implausible.

If this gets picked up by the media, that's a lot of plugs for the already moribund WatchKnow.org site that he just happened to mention to the G-men.

Someone hijacking a discussion of Wikipedia's problems to promote their own website, Greg? Say it ain't so!

You have to know the technique to adroitly recognize it.

Say, someone help me out here -- I've tried searching on my own, and I just can't find it...

Where are the page view statistics for Wikimedia Commons' most popular images, in terms of traffic? I want something similar to this page of stats for English Wikipedia.

For December 2009, the list is here. You'll notice what sorts of things tend to end up on top (NSFW).

Judging from incredible spike in views for the nonexistent fourth-place entry http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jer...m_auto-icon.jpg, I would take these stats with a large grain of salt. (I presume it would look something like its capitalised counterpart if it did exist:

The notorious section 230 specifically says that federal criminal law is not under it's umbrella (see http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html, under (e)(1)).



s.230 places no such obligations on those immunized. There are no requirements to assist anyone in "investigations", to remove or edit offensive content and so forth. There has been at least one case -- http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/3...65.01-1120.html -- where this doctrine of "they must help me to retain immunity" was put to the test, and it failed.

If this gets picked up by the media, that's a lot of plugs for the already moribund WatchKnow.org site that he just happened to mention to the G-men.

Sanger has posted his letter on Meta, where Mike Godwin has posted a response.

Sanger's allegations regarding Erik Moeller raise a wholly separate question of free-speech law -- specifically, defamation. In the United States, even a public figure can successfully sue for libel if it can be shown that the defamer posted information with "reckless disregard for the truth." The pattern of slipshod legal research and allegation in Sanger's letter strikes me as convincing evidence that Sanger is reckless in how he chooses to accuse Wikimedia Foundation and Erik Moeller. While I won't analyze his letter in a way that would amount to republishing and re-emphasizing the defamation contained within it, I will say that I think any jury might reasonably infer that Sanger's recklessness in posting his allegations, together with his clear intention to damage the reputation of an individual person, is the kind of thing that deserves compensation and ought to be deterred.
I understand the impulse to post something intemperate when one feels a sense of injury, as Sanger clearly does, for reasons others may know better than I. But I don't think bad feelings justify this sort of attack on an indivdual. Wikimedia Foundation is well-positioned to defend itself publicly in a way that no individual staff member can be. Sanger knows that Moeller in his Wikimedia Foundation role is not developing or originating Wikimedia Commons content -- there is in my mind no excuse for this over-the-top personal attack.

Sanger has posted his letter on Meta, where Mike Godwin has posted a response.

-- SuperLawyer, Mike Godwin

Folks, if you have any extra cash lying around, I strongly recommend putting everything in popcorn futures. They are almost assuredly going to skyrocket this week.

Sanger knows that Moeller in his Wikimedia Foundation role is not developing or originating Wikimedia Commons content...

Saber rattling and fear mongering.

Godwin seems to be confused about the role of a person who reports a crime. He seems to think you can defend the allegation by saying that the reporting party cited the law incorrectly.

Still, Sanger's mentioning Moeller in the letter was probably unnecessary

The whole letter was unnecessary. But the mention of Moeller was about the only part he got right.

I didn't say that. Somey did ,I think.

I think mentioning it was a mixed blessing. It does point to the tolerance of pedophilia from a top WMF executive. It also looks a little like sour grapes. I'm hoping that no matter the flavor of the grapes prosecuting officials consider Sangers presitige and expertise (yeah I know a bunch of you don't like him) with internet communities and take a hard look at the material and review the relevant criminal statutes.

Oops. Mispasted. Sorry. I fixed it.



I think it's quite an assumption to think that the FBI won't look at this report and say "yeah, we already knew about that, but why waste so much time and money on a borderline case which will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court on a First Amendment claim, when we can spend it elsewhere where things are so much more blatant."