The latest Fox News coverage of pornography and Wikipedia expressly addresses the unmitigated use of Wikipedia in schools. Fox obtains the perspective of an attorney expert, James Marsh. in protecting sexual victimized children. He says of Wikiopedia:



But it much, much worse. Not only has Wikipedia not meet its duty to keep the material off the site, The Wikipedia community has actively promoted the use of the site with school children even while the offending material was know to be present and in absence of any child protection measures whatsoever. One such medicine show advocate for Wikipedia use in the classroom, "Durova" has belittled concerns on WR about Wikipedia's content. I wonder if that is still her position?

Not just Durova - I wonder what Fox News would have made of Wikipedia Hero and Review Nemisis - Shankbone who was witheringly condescending about our "unfounded" concerns over OMG! Think of the CHILDRENNZZZ!!!!!! Lucky for him that his taint has faded into history.

Mr. Marsh screws up, there. Actually websites don't have to play by these rules, due to sec 230. As I read sec 230, even "completely closed" websites PER SE don't have to play by the rules-- the only person responsible for bad content on them is the person who actually put it there. The rest of the host site, if it is a "computerized information system" (which it surely ill be if it's a website), is not responsible (if it was, every server between the content maker and the person at the end of the internet feed would be responsiblible).

The person providing the illegal content (child porn) or actionable content (defamation) may be difficult to identify. But even if they are identified, the website (any website) cannot be held responsible for what the third part contributes-- there are no deep pockets to go after, and no criminal liablity for anybody but the person that provides the content. The only exception is copyright infringement issues.

To put it succinctly: the website is only responsible if it reproduces copyrighted material; not if it reproduces porn, child porn, or defamation. Sorry, Mr. Marsh.

I think he was referring to the moral responsibility.

Good thing they're guilty on more counts of that than anything else.

Geez, thanks for making me think of Shankbone's taint.

He may have disappeared, but The Taint remains, kind of like the Cheshire Cat's grin.

As I said many times, there are probably about 60 or so users, many admin, who need to be banned right now based on problematic actions related to the uploading and the keeping of the images that do not belong. If the WMF doesn't act, there wont really be an WMF in a year's time.

To be honest, the Dutch and German users who don't like our restrictions should start their own. They have been a drag on the system for a very long time as they keep pushing the envelope in a destructive way that makes me wonder if they think they are in the movie Speed: "Go faster!"

You are incorrect. Section 230 immunity does not apply to child pornography, once the service provider is made aware of its presence.

Text of Section 230:

Right. Or any other federal crimimal law. The one requiring documentation of models age in sexually explicit content also comes to mind.

But Milton has a very expansive reading (or at least had) of Sec. 230. He seems to think if a commercial site provides obscene content developed and produced itself (not the content of others) it would be immune from State obscenity laws. I believe this to be wrong but there seems to be no convincing him.

It surely does, according to case law so far. No sexual content or protection of minors suit has yet penetrated sec 230 shield to the service provider, so far as I'm aware.

http://tunedin.entrepreneur.com/tradejourn...06794872_3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_o...tent_and_minors

The only federal law which probably still applies, is that once a site is made aware of the presense of child porn on the site, is that it is requried to use a federal tipline to let the feds know that there is porn on its site. It's apprently not required to monitor itself to be sure of that, not required to edit itself, and not even required to remove the porn once its aware of it. 18 USC 2258A. It's certainly not criminally or civily liable for it, or else libraries that failed to limit the acccess to child porn on their own internet links to adults, would be liable for doing that. But they aren't. The law doesn't want the city library to play net-nanny and police its own computers regarding children who access the net from them. If the law wants WMF to do that, the law had better put its own public institutions in order first.

Right. It's also required to remove it if asked.

I would hope they would be. If a drug seller is a facilitator of the crime of drug use, a librarian without any care to limit is a facilitator of action. People should be held responsible when it comes to the endangerment of children. Neglect laws, at the very minimum, should apply.

There are a number of different entities you're confusing, here. Businesses and persons who produce child porn are criminally liable, but simply hosting porn on your site does not mean you're producing it or developing it. As for "publishing it" that's not considered part of production, and the entire shielding of the "electronic publication of stuff" is just what sec 230 is about. Electronic publication, even if it includes a fair amount of editing, doesn't constitute creation. Content providors are not content creators, if they provide it from an electronic service, defined as a server computer connected to server client computers. The server doesn't have to look for the porn, doesn't have to remove the porn, doesnt' even have to do a thing once it's been made aware of the porn. That's all been decided. It's self-serving, of course, since it kept the city from having to police its own net connections in its own libraries to see that kids couldn't look at porn on them. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you don't want city libraries to legally have to act as net-nanny, you can't legally make WMF do so, either.

Now, there is a legal issue here and a moral one. Public libraries should figure out a way to keep this stuff behind some kind of reasonable firewall, and so should WMF. But it's one thing to say they should, another to say they should go to jail if they don't. The chilling effect of having to be a nanny can be mighty chilling-- enough that you might decide it's easier to simply lock children out of the library altogether than expose yourself to the risk of going to prison because you didn't watch them closely enough.

Have you ever noticed there aren't as many public swimming pools as there were when you were growing up? Ever wonder why?


Well, they don't. Take it up with your legislature.


Cite?

Another item from Section 230:

You could make the case that the Wikimedia Foundation has failed to design its software in the spirit of this provision, and today we have a situation in which no filtering software currently available is able to perform this function for Wikipedia, short of blocking all of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia claims to be an encyclopedia that's suitable for children, it is at the same time unable to offer parents any tools to filter out material that parents may find objectionable. This is obviously a Wikimedia Foundation responsibility, since the software design decisions of last resort are made by Foundation employees.

While Section 230 is vague in terms of whether this language applies to Wikipedia's situation, it seems to me that an association of children's librarians or school librarians could use this as a basis for a civil class action against Wikimedia Foundation. By invoking 230 as the basis for their civil suit, it might function as a tactic that pulls the rug out from the Foundation's obvious counter-argument, which would be that it is immune under 230.

This is not a big deal in terms of software design. All it requires is a flag bit on all questionable material, maintained by Foundation employees, and an option to access Wikipedia in such a manner that the flagged material is unavailable. The Foundation should recognize that this is one way forward that will help turn down the heat on their current public relations problem.

But they won't, because the perverts in Wikimedia's San Francisco office enjoy all those dirty pictures as much as the Wikipediots who upload them!

It doesn't impair the "enforcement" of those laws. It limits the people against whom they can BE enforced, which is not the same thing.

I can see both sides of this one. If your computer is an internet host (a node) and some porn picture of a child is transmitted though it and thus diseminated by it, that makes you a publisher of internet porn, if you believe in the literal concept of "publication." But even if you took the reasonable stance that you should only be responsible for things you took a look at, and put your stamp of approval on before re-sending or routing, that puts far too much of an onus on you to be a filter for for all of society's garbage. The net would either slow down to nothing, or else you'd have to turn your host node off, and the effect would be the same. The CDA was written to make sure that didn't happen. Behold, the unintended consequences.

The thing about paper printing and editing, is that there was always time to do the nanny thing anyway, since all the rest took so long, and was so expensive and involved so little actual information (numbers of bits) that there was no excuse not to. But once the thing got to be fully electronic, human filtering of electronically-transmitted and published obscenity got to be an unreasonable expectation.

Starting with your upload here: File:The Vision of the Last Judgment.png maybe. How healthy is is to instill in children the fear of burning in hell? For looking at pictures of the Whore of Babylon?

You are utterly hypocritical.

Like I said, no reasoning with you.

Or with judges and courts either, apparently, since available case law on this sides with me, not you.

These all appear to be civil actions though. Has the criminal stuff been tested? 18 USC 1466A:



I'd say a website hosting an image is almost the definition of "possession with intent to distribute". Especially after said website is notified of the material and refuses to remove it. A successful s.230 defense here would basically void this law, if not most other criminal law as well. (That's clearly the whole point behind the s.230 exception for criminal prosecutions.)

I'd say this is the point where Jimbo has messed up - because he hunted out, found it - no deniability - but then has suggested (but seems to be backtracking now) that it can be put back after things have quietened down. Then again, he has now said so many things he can be quote-farmed for every possible point of view on this, it seems.

I've seen on a few occasions where WMF volunteers and contractors have stated they've removed child porn from their servers. It would be interesting to file a FOIA request that asked for information on any reported incidents.

Meanwhile, Mike Godwin admits they host superfluous porn. The next step will be to get him to admit they let children administrate their porn and also view porn that was deleted for a variety of reasons .

Does he not realize that the scope says that such unconnected images should be deleted? >.<

All attention is on Commons but there is a load more porn on Wikipedia untouched and distracted from.

The media will certainly not pick up on this and it will be swept under the carpet with white lies.

Yeah, but that is fair use porn. We just want to get the free stuff.

But we have to do something about it ... would you like to discuss that?

Well, Wiki would probably be harder to deal with it. It would be easier to have all "free" content moved to commons and instantly be eradicated under tough inclusion standards.