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Wikipedia

Wales Supports Purging Porn From Wikipedia 263

Larry Sanger writes "Jimmy Wales recently took a bold position against pornography on Wikimedia Commons: 'Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support.' Wales also restarted the "Commons:Sexual content" policy page. His basic complaint is that Wikimedia Commons hosts too much unnecessary porn, and he wants to get rid of it. He underscored his seriousness this way, stating that we can expect 'a strong statement' from the WMF soon: 'If the Wikimedia Foundation wants to declare that it is OK for Commons to be a porn host, they can do that, and I'll not be able to continue. That isn't going to happen, though, and in fact you should expect a strong statement from the Board and/or Sue in the next few days.'" (More, below.)

Submission + - Jimmy Wales: the porn on Commons must go (wikimedia.org) 1

Larry Sanger writes: Jimmy Wales recently took a bold position against pornography on Wikimedia Commons: "Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support." Wales also restarted the "Commons:Sexual content" policy page. His basic complaint is that Wikimedia Commons hosts too much unnecessary porn, and he wants to get rid of it. He underscored his seriousness this way, stating that we can expect "a strong statement" from the WMF soon: "if the Wikimedia Foundation wants to declare that it is ok for Commons to be a porn host, they can do that, and I'll not be able to continue. That isn't going to happen, though, and in fact you should expect a strong statement from the Board and/or Sue in the next few days." This comes about a month after I originally posted my report about depictions-of-child-sexual-molestation on Wikimedia Foundation servers to the FBI, which Slashdot duly ripped to shreds (as only Slashdot can), and a little over a week after the FoxNews.com story. The latter coverage reported that one of my senators, and my representative to Congress, had forwarded the matter to the FBI's Assistant Director of Congressional Affairs. I'm happy to be able to congratulate Jimmy Wales for his good judgment on this, and I look forward to the larger Wikimedia community approaching these issues with a little more sanity.
Wikipedia

Larry Sanger Tells FBI Wikipedia Distributes "Child Pornography" 572

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.

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