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Wikimedia Censors Wikinews
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has revealed that the Wikimedia Foundation Board (which controls Wikipedia and Wikinews) has killed off a Wikinews report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit. Wikinews is a collaborative news site and is meant to be editorially independent from the WMF. The WMF office also suppressed a Wikinews investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia, which was independently covered by ValleyWag and other outlets this week. The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control. In deleting articles critical of the WMF prior to publication, Wikileaks says the Wikimedia Foundation may have set a dangerous precedent that could remove all of its CDA section 230 immunity (at least for Wikinews, where the control was exercised)."
The Wikinews discussion about the story is here.
Wikipedia Signpost has another take on the porno conflict.
Ars Technica had this story weeks ago. EFF has filed a motion to quash (EFF site currently overloaded), and they'll probably win.
As Ars Technica points out, the effect of this lawsuit is to widely disseminate the information that this little-known literary agency is a dud.
in part:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." And let's face it, the top management at Wikipedia (and many other organizations) often do a lot a stupid things despite themselves.
Also talk about FUD; the "child pornography" they were talking about is of album art from a famous heavy metal rock band: The cover is from a 1976 album of the Scorpions titled 'Virgin Killer' and has the image of an underage girl, posing nude, with an crack crossing over her genitals, but nothing blocking out her breasts. The girl appears to be around 10-years-old. - Ref. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikinews_suppressed_Wikipedia_pornography_investigation
You should probably look at the album cover and decide for yourself whether it's child pornography or not. Here it is.
The Bible-bashers should punish their kids. It's not Wikipedia's problem if their kids are looking up autofellatio on Wikipedia (one of their other complaints).
Which just goes to show everyone how freaking insane this "pedo" witch hunt is getting: It is a freaking Scorpions album cover people!!!! What is next, are they going to lock up everyone who has the original Blind Faith album, since it has a topless 14 year old holding an airplane? It isn't like we all don't know what real kiddie porn is, and IMHO it is truly the height of insanity to compare a 70's album cover to horribly abused children. But that is my 02c,YMMV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The post says "The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control." But this is factually inaccurate. 230 applies even if a website exercises editorial control prior to publication. See, e.g., Blumenthal v. Drudge. Eric.
I saw the cut version a few years later and quite frankly I couldn't see what the problem was, but what do I know.
Compare Pretty Baby to Blue Lagoon, another prepubescent skin flick featuring Brooke Shields (this woman sure knew what she was doing I guess). Same controversy, pretty much. Even more so in the early 80s because the prude movement was starting to grow exponentially by then in response to the perceived excesses of the 60s and 70s.
But Pretty Baby was a huge deal back in the day.
OK, now I'll go back to playing Pong on my PDP-10.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.