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Larry Sanger Tells FBI Wikipedia Distributes "Child Pornography"
Taco Cowboy writes with news that Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has reported to the FBI what he says is child pornography on Wikipedia, including links (redacted in the letter just linked) to entries about pedophilia and the genre of manga known as lolicon. The Register has up an article with some analysis, which mentions the opinion of at least one attorney whose "reading of the statute [requiring reporting of child porn images] is that it does apply to the Wikimedia Foundation." Update 20100414 5:00 GMT: Larry Sanger has posted a general reply in response to critics of his report to the FBI, in which he addresses the form, content, and motivation of his complaint, and offers some discussion of the relevant statute.
I wonder if he was looking this stuff up for another reason and then after he "felt bad", or his mother found his backpack full of loli manga, he decided to draft this crybaby letter to the FBI. All this seems like is some bitter old mans attempt at shutting down a widely known and used website because his own site(s) aren't as popular or widely used. Until this posting I have never heard of those two site and I would have to re-read the letter to recall the names. Though I could be wrong. He could have read those statutes, did a Google search for those words, came across the wiki categories, and then wanted his 5 minutes of fame. Either way this just seems plain stupid. Wonder if the FBI will get a good laugh out of this or will actually go after them.
Don't conflate sexual abuse and child pornography. The Wikimedia foundation obviously isn't involved in sexual abuse and doesn't tolerate or encourage it, and a lot of the images in question (perhaps all of them, I haven't checked) have nothing to do with the actual abuse of children. And if you're going to make claims about the destroying the "moral fabric of society" you should probably provide some evidence that something's actually changed.
There are still unbelievers! Some people don't follow jeeeesssuuuss!!!
There's your evidence.