I am not a lawyer so would not have the correct legal words to explain
this. But roughly... the legal responsibility is not the same when you
are simply "hosting" content published by others, as opposed to
"publishing with an editorial role".
For example, when you are simply a host provider, you can not be held
responsible if you host a content which is defaming a person as long as
you were not aware of it. Once the host is informed of the existence of
the illegal content, it has an obligation of removing it.
And to a certain extent, the host has an obligation to make sure that
steps are taken to avoid illegal content to land on its servers. This is
one of the reason for the existence of terms of use. Or this can justify
recommandations made by WMF to the community to be super careful when
dealing with biographies of living people.
However, when the company is considered to have an editorial role (and
this is very vague...), it may be considered legally responsible for any
illegal content being on its servers. It is by default considered aware
of the illegal content, and even worse... supporting its presence there.
The LAST thing we want is to have the WMF being recognized as having an
editorial role.
Is that clearer ?
Flo
Le 27/02/16 18:50, Anthony Cole a écrit :
Florence, can you explain to me the actual risk the foundation would be
exposed to if ir got involved in editorial decisions, please? Perhaps some
hypothetical examples would help.
Anthony Cole
On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 9:49 AM, Florence Devouard <fdevou...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Le 27/02/16 00:37, SarahSV a écrit :
On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 12:11 PM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com>
wrote:
However, if the core interest (as Sarah suggests) is to create paid
opportunities for those who excel at Wikipedia writing and editing, those
opportunities exist, and are increasingly available. The money doesn't
need
to flow through the WMF. In my opinion, it's much better if it doesn't;
the
WMF has enough political challenges to deal with, without getting
involved
in paid editing.
Hi Pete,
I didn't intend to start a detailed discussion about paid editing in this
thread. I mentioned it only as one of the ways in which the Foundation
could help unpaid editors.
To address a few issues: the point of suggesting the Foundation as a
neutral broker is to remove the paid editor's COI. The editor would have
no
relationship with the people wanting the article, and would not be chosen
by them. The brief from the Foundation would be to produce a well-written,
reasonably comprehensive, neutral article about X, based on the best
sources available. (Someone referred to this as advertising. It would be
exactly the opposite.)
It needn't be the Foundation that organizes this. A third party might
work,
but the danger of a private company doing it is that they would rely on it
for profit, and therefore would be sensitive to pressure from companies.
The idea of the Foundation as broker is that it would always place the
core
policies above the desires of the client. Foundation involvement struck me
as the only way for an editor to be paid for an article without having a
COI.
I believe someone else suggested in this thread that it could be run the
way the Education Program is, as a related but separate body. That would
be
something you would be perfectly placed to lead, Pete, given your
experience as consultant, editor, and former Foundation employee.
Sarah
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Removing a COI is not the only issue at stake Sarah.
Would WMF get involved into such a process, it would also possibly change
its legal reponsibility. Right now, WMF does not get involved in the
editorial process, which allows to claim WMF is only hosting the content.
If WMF is somewhat involved in an editorial process which results in
paying the authors, then WMF might lose the "host" status.
Flo
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