Sanger's Message to the FBI

Unter dem Titel "Sanger's Message to the FBI" wurde ein offener Brief von Wikipedia-Mitgründer Larry Sanger am 10. April 2010 im Wikimedia-Metawiki veröffentlicht, nachdem er diesen schon am 7. April 2010 in einer Mailingliste publiziert hatte.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Inhalt
2 Hintergrund
3 Original-E-Mail
4 Einzelnachweise
5 Weblinks

Übrigens: Die PlusPedia ist NICHT die Wikipedia.
Wir sind ein gemeinnütziger Verein, PlusPedia ist werbefrei. Wir freuen uns daher über eine kleine Spende!

1 Inhalt

In dem offenen Brief teilt er mit, dass er Wikimedia Commons wegen dem Verteilen kinderpornographischen Materials beim FBI anzeigt hat. Angeblich würde Wikimedia Commons wissenentlich Kinderpornographie verbreiten.

Als Beweise gibt er an, dass es zwei Kategorien in der Wikimedia Commons zum Thema Kinderpornographie gibt. Außerdem wäre das Wikipedia-Projekt so enorm groß, dass es ihn nicht überraschen würde, wenn auch außerhalb dieser zwei Kategorien Bilder mit kinderpornographischem Inhalt zu finden seien.

2 Hintergrund

Larry Sanger verließ Wikipedia 2002 wegen "Uneinigkeiten in Bezug auf redaktionelle und Management-Politik".^[1]
Die E-Mail wurde im Metawiki keine 24 Stunden nach dem Einstellen zum Löschen vorgeschlagen und anschließend gelöscht.^[2]
Wikimedia-Anwalt Mike Godwin wies die Vorwürfe zurück und warf Sanger vor, er hätte mehrere Gesetze miteinander verschmolzen und verwechselt.^[3]

3 Original-E-Mail

Der Original-Text von Larry Sanger in Englisch, entnommen aus der Mailingliste.^[4]

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?trx=lx&list=EDTECH&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.