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From Wikileaks

Sean Ridgeley (Neoseeker.com)
Saturday May 16, 2008

Wikileaks, a site dedicated to 'developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,' revealed the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Board (the machine behind Wikipedia, and its stem projects) censors Wikinews (another of its operations). To clarify, Wikileaks is completely separate from the Wikimedia Foundation and its affiliate websites. While some might say 'oh well' or 'what do you expect,' it's a little different here: the WMF, legally speaking, is supposed to be editorially independent from Wikinews. Having violated laws, not only is the public in danger, but the foundation itself.

The US Communcations Decency Action (CDA) section 230 gives providers of Internet services immunity from legal action regarding user-generated content, provided they do not exercise "pre-publication control." Basically, let the community run free, and you won't get in trouble. Edit the content before it is published and/or pick and choose what is published, then you're going to have trouble.

The articles deleted in this case were the report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit, and an investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia (Wikimedia counsel Michael Godwin said it might be defamatory).

The first involved a publisher (Bauer), of 'Barbara Bauer Literacy Agency', an agency claiming it is "specializing in the development and marketing of new and unpublished authors," and that it had "placed books with a number of well-known commercial publishers", though no details or proof were given. This proved an associated conflict, so edits pertaining to Bauer (many of which were considered libel against her reputation as a publisher) were deleted, and following the incurred legal process, so was the article and talk page. The article has been under review and deleted in previous years, as well.

The second is a little more straightforward and involves an image of a music album cover, which features a partially nude girl, appearing about the age of ten. Though votes swayed the opposite way, the administrator stated it was deleted for the following reason:

"..outside pressure should never influence us, not to do what the pressure group want, nor to do the opposite just to spite them. We should base our decisions on Wikipedia's policies and values. Those policies and values say that we should only use non-free content under stringent conditions. This image didn't and doesn't meet those conditions and should be deleted. If it does meet them in the future it should be undeleted."

The other major part of the investigation involved Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Erik Möller 'endorsing' pornography featuring minors. According to a Google cache, an offending image depiction as such was posted to his website, though has since been deleted. In 2001 he made the following statement:

"If there was any doubt, yes, I am defending that children can have sex with each other. Not only adolescents, but also children of earlier ages -- whenever they want to," stated Möller, although denies that he supports paedophilia saying "I have pondered putting a disclaimer into the article ("I am not a paedophile. I am a 22-y-o heterosexual white male") but I see no reason to give this concession to the child sex hysteria."

In any case, deleting the articles prior to publication violates the agreed editorial independence between the WMF and Wikinews, and as such could remove all of the foundation's CDA section 230 immunity, although possibly only for Wikinews, where the issue occurred.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.neoseeker.com/news/8044-wikimedia-foundation-board-censoring-wikinews/