Re: Libel threat

Yann wrote:
>As long as there is no mirror of Wikipedia in Europe, I don't think any 
>affiliate there will have any responsibility about Wikipedia content.
>Am I right?

I don't know. That really depends on what nation the Wikimedia Europe 
affiliate would be in and what laws they have present. But having a 
foundation in Europe creates Wikimedia assets that can be sued or seized by a 
European government. Best then to choose wisely on where we put it. 

>And as long as there is no technical advantage, which seems to be 
>the case with current projects, I don't think we should set up a official 
>mirror in Europe. However everybody is free to have his own private 
>mirror under his responsibility.

Well part of our long term plan may involve static mirrors all over the world 
that are updated in near real time. We wouldn't really need any Wikimedia 
organization in the nation in which those mirrors are located in order to 
have them. I imagine that the server time will be donated to the Foundation 
by various different providers. 

So we would not have assets for any government to take in those cases and the 
worse that could happen is that the hard drive containing the mirror may be 
taken or erases.  If equipment is taken from one of our mirror partners, I'm 
sure we would compensate them for the loss (and distribute a press release 
exposing the very bad move by whichever government took it). 

>As I already said, the advantages to have a local affiliate (at least in 
>France) is for coordination of Wikipedia promotion: collecting funds, 
>organising talks and meetings, selling goodies (tee-shirts, posters...), etc.

Yes, I agree. 

>I just got another invitation for a conference and a booth for May 26th and 
>27th in a "Linux / Free Software for Education" event organised by the local 
>academic institution (in south-east of France, near Geneva). A similar event 
>took place last year. If you want more details, see http://www.linuxedu.org/, 
>in French of course.

That sounds very interesting! I think that it would be great to eventual press 
DVD ROMs with a Linux distro and with Wikipedia 1.0 on it. One install and 
you have a complete Linux system with a huge amount of reference material. We 
could even have a update utility that would periodically grab updated copies 
of articles.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)