Humanities desk
< September 21	<< Aug \| September \| Oct >>	September 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 22

Parallel tracks on seafloor? File:2003-3d-hawaiian-islands-usgs-i2809.jpg

What are the parallel tracks on the seafloor in File:2003-3d-hawaiian-islands-usgs-i2809.jpg? Cracks in the Pacific Plate? Lain cable? SPECTRE?--Chris (クリス • フィッチ) (talk) 02:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could they be artifacts from compositing several imaging runs to create the image? After all, the sea floor was mapped using Side-scan sonar, and not directly observed all at once. --Jayron32 02:58, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

These are acquisition artifacts, and are common in geographic data-sets. See this chapter from Geophysical Image Estimation, called "Eliminating noise and ship-tracks... for a mathematical overview of the data-processing in sea-floor bathymetry. Such artifacts are common in lots of data-processing - here are satellite orbital tracks near Madagascar, and here are similar tracks due to ship trajectories in the Sea of Galilee. "The pertinence of this data set to our daily geophysical problems is threefold: (1) We often need to interpolate irregular data. (2) The data has noise bursts of various types. (3) The data has systematic error (drift) which tends to leave data-acquisition tracks in the resulting image." Nimur (talk) 11:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch West India Company.

I have in my possession a badge. It is cast in lead and then brass plated.I think it dates from about 1700.On the left side is a fur trapper.On the right side an indian.On the top is an eagle.In the centre is a windmill under which are barrels and casks.On the reverse are six small circles of brass through which a pin went to hold the badge to a uniform.It is three and a half inches wide and four inches high.I wrote to the Manitoba Museum because I thought it was Hudson Bay Company, but the curator said no and she thought it was Dutch West India Company because of the windmill.Can you help me please? J.Beckett —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.179.102 (talk) 07:44, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds very much like the Seal of New York City. I don't know that the Dutch East India Company ever used a similar seal, and our article states that the eagle was added to the NYC seal in 1784, to replace the crown, so to me that says NYC.--Rallette (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The seal of the Dutch West India Company can be seen here[1]. It has a beaver on a shield surmounted by a crown. Looks like your badge is from NYC. Alansplodge (talk) 16:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Russian Motorways

Looking at my Michelin Europe 2009 road atlas, and reading the description of the Russian federal motorways in Wikipedia, it appears that Russia has got almost no freeways/expressways (similar to American Interstate highways, for example). Is this true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.44.134 (talk) 11:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Historically, there was a strong emphasis on railways, and of course ordinary people had very little access to personal cars... AnonMoos (talk) 14:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Google Maps, I can easily see there are some freeways/expressways (ie. roads with a divider separating the lanes and grade separated intersections) spreading out from Moscow. The Russian federal highways that are numbered with a "M" are generally of motorway standard until about 50-100 km from Moscow before they revert to regular 2-lane roads. For example, the M9 is of motorway standard from the Moscow ring road until just past the town of Volokolamsk ~100 km to the west. Here ia a photo of the M9 from near Volokolamsk. Astronaut (talk) 09:34, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Super-Injunctions in the UK

Recently in the UK press, there has be at least 3 cases of England footballers and one golfer, taking out super-injunctions in order to prevent publication of stories about their private lives.

My questions are:

1. Can these "stories" be reported outside of the UK, e.g. Irish versions of UK newspapers, or American publications

2. If these injunctions only apply to the UK, then can the stories be published on websites hosted outside the UK?

3. If yes, then why has no British newspaper done so? (Set-up a website outside and run the story, or printed it in their non-UK version)

Thanks Jaseywasey (talk) 16:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We do not give legal advice, but that said, 1 - Yes and no; see 3, 2 - Yes, 3 - We're on more dodgy ground. If a UK domiciled company uses a US website, for instance, to circumvent a court order, then I think the UK company would rapidly find itself in trouble with the court. In short, if the publisher has no UK base or holdings, then it is outside the law of the UK. If it has either of these things, it may well be within the grasp of UK law. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:19, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the reply - Obviously I wasn't asking for legal advice, just general information on how these injunctions work

Based on your answers, I am still confused why the person or people who are trying to sell the stories/photographs have not tried selling them in other countries.

I am sure a wholly Irish-owned newspaper would increase their circulation by running these stories about the England players and as the golfer is well known in America, I would have thought that some US publications would have been interested in him. Jaseywasey (talk) 16:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't the person or people trying to sell the stories/photos still within the grasp of UK law, usually? If the "targets" of the stories can convince the courts that a certain photo was - with sufficient certainty - supplied by someone in particular, then they could hold them as having violated the injunction, couldn't they? It would seem odd to write super-injunctions that strongly prohibit any publication, but don't also prohibit the spreading of the source material with the intent for it to be published, even if that publishing happens abroad./Coffeeshivers (talk) 21:03, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Depends upon whether they're aware of the court order. If so - at least by this example (Trafigura versus The Guardian, point 18) - then they're bound by the injunction and must not do anything to assist or permit the injunction to be broken. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

advice for starting a wiki with porn images

Okay, I like to start a wiki that would have images that not only contain nudes such as these in Wikicommons, Commons:Category:Nude women; but stuff that would be more sexually explicit, and unlike Wikicommons, the purposes could be as gratuitous as possibly educational. Also, I might want to post images other than CC-SA, and perhaps employ a more liberal interpetation of fair use than Wikipedia. Indeed, this wiki seems to stretch such a bit. Encyclopedia Of Stupid:Copyrights.

It's not that I'm trying to start a porn site, but rather one that would allow porn, erotica, sexual topics that WP, for it's wealth in such, wouldn't allow for reasons of NPOV, OR, not encyclopedic, etc.

So how would I do it, particularly in regards to explicit nude and sexual images, model releases (likely few due to difficulties in obtaining them), and copyrights. What countries should I have them hosted, served, or whatever the expression is? US? Canada? Scandanavia? Portugal? other?

Thanks for any help. :-)
206.130.174.42 (talk) 20:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia contains plenty of quite explicit images. Pearl necklace for example. Wikipedia is not censored.--92.251.176.105 (talk) 20:17, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Sexual content "Wikipedia is not censored, which in practice means that we permit sexual content in many areas. Any material which serves an encyclopedic purpose should be preserved," and again, the copyright issues.205.189.194.208 (talk) 21:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you're just trying to create a wiki warehouse of porn...

The technical issue is nothing too difficult. Get server space (or host your own), get a domain name, install MediaWiki, set it up as you see fit.
The legal issue depends on what you are worried about. If it's an obscenity issue, the USA is a pretty safe place to host things. With a few important exceptions (e.g. child pornography or anything resembling it), the US courts have generally held that porn is more or less protected speech and nobody spends much time trying to shut down porn websites along those lines. This is not legal advice, but it's pretty common knowledge (and quite in evidence) that this is the case. The copyright issue is more tricky. Fair use is a defense, not a right. What that means is that if you host things that someone else thinks is covered by their copyright, they will send you a nasty letter saying, "take this down." If you say, "but it's fair use!", they can sue you. Then you have to tell a judge, "it's fair use!", and the judge then is the one who gets to make the call as to whether you are infringing or not. Will you get away with it? It depends on the use, of course. But the site as you've described it probably won't cut the mustard. This is not legal advice, but you should know that fair use claims are hard to make and that there is a significant case law that even limits how much it can be used for "educational" purposes, which is not as infinitely large an exemption as even people on Wikipedia believe it to be. A talk with a copyright lawyer would definitely be worthwhile before sinking time and money into this sort of venture. I don't know the copyright laws of other countries or whether that would make this easier.

All of this is separate from whether Wikipedia allows sexual topics, of course. --Mr.98 (talk) 22:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would be careful about the 'anything goes' when it comes to the US. I was looking for something a few days back and came across Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2009 July 15#Fisting in American porn where it was mentioned how the George W. Bush administration took a harder line on pornography (or said they did), notably the case of United States v. Extreme Associates and also how one thing to be mindful of in the US is that federal government only needs to convince a jury in one state (and I presume survive any appeals) and your in trouble. I'm not denying the US is relatively more tolerant then many other countries, for example here in NZ things like stimulated rape, lolicon, bestiality are generally consired problematic. I think the UK, Canada, and Australia are somewhat similar to NZ. Nil Einne (talk) 23:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the info. This is why I'm a little concerned about hosting it in the US. I understand that some countries are more liberal. Indeed, for what it's worth, I understand that Afghanistan has no copyright laws, though yes, I suppose the sex thing would be a problem. Some content shouldn't be a problem copyright-wise. Unlike Wikipedia or Wikicommons, if I'm presuming correctly about the two, I would allow CC-NC, CC-ND, "I'll-allow-you-to-post-my-stuff-here-but-not-anywhere-else," and perhaps others. I also wonder if if violations of copyright are more an issue of crime or civil stuff. I presume in the latter, the burden of evidence would be greater ("But your honor, I didn't know it was copyrighted"), whereas, in the case of civil, I doubt the litigant could prove that, say, a 30 year-old picture, that was degraded, attributed, and was unlikely to have been, is currently, or will be much of a revenue maker, could present a compelling case.205.189.194.208 (talk) 23:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) Obscenity actually has a fair amount of info on US cases. Another interesting example given there is the owner of Red Rose Stories who was charged solely for stories (there appears to be some disagreement about whether it's solely because of stories involving children or not). While it's possible some of these cases won't survive appeal to the Supreme Court if that were to happen, they do highlight the problem. Even if what you're doing may be okay, you may need a lot of money and take a lot of risk in finding out. Nil Einne (talk) 23:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

and yet we have slavesinlove, sexandsubmission, pet girls, and society SM (warning: these sites are pretty intense); none which most jurors would think, at least not immediately, serve a redeeming purpose under the 1973 definition. So how do they do it? Lots of lawyers?205.189.194.208 (talk) 00:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well no one said the government was suing everyone possible. (And the Bush administration is also no more.) In fact, if you refer to the earlier discussion, one of the issues raised was that there are a lot of theoretical areas that may fall foul of a jury like 'interacial' porn. The government's decision to take a case against any particular site or person is likely to be a complex interplay of different factors. Notably they may choose some that they feel they would be successful against and perhaps that are fairly prominent and long running to try and set a precedent and get people to think twice. For example, in the story site, it may have partially been that the stories involving children were a catalyst, but having decided to take a case they threw on as many things as they think might stick to test them Nil Einne (talk) 04:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Of note is that the US lost United States v. Extreme Associates. Again, just because something is occasionally a legal issue doesn't mean it's worth pulling your hair out over. The US government occasionally tries to prosecute pornography, but I'm fairly sure it hasn't been successful in the last 50 years as long as the porn in question didn't touch on that third rail of children. There are so many porn sites in the US, especially those which involve "extreme" scenarios, that it seems unreasonable to worry about being the sole site that would get singled out unless one was doing something particularly unusual. In such a case one would probably enjoy some nice legal representation as well from the Larry Flynts and ACLUs of the world. I would personally be less worried about a US court overturning a porno site than I would almost anywhere else in the world, specifically because the US legal obsession with precedent is so high and because the amount of case law vindicating pornography is so established. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how

On March 11, 2009 Extreme Associates and its owners pled guilty to the reinstated obscenity charges to avoid trial effecting shutting down the company. Extreme Associates also apparently took its website down concurrent with the plea.[8]

The couple was sentenced on July 1, 2009 to one year and one day in prison.[9] In late September they began serving their prison sentences, Zicari at La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas and Romano at Waseca Federal Correctional Institution in Minnesota.[10]

counts as having "lost". At least for me, if I have to spend a year and a day in prison and my sentence isn't even overturned (in other words I'm still considered a convicted criminal), I wouldn't be so happy to conclude the government lost. Perhaps you didn't read the article properly, as it's true the goverment lost initially, but this was reversed on appeal and then the couple basically gave up. (If the article is outdated and in fact the couple did eventually win a further appeal either to the Supreme Court or the government gave up, feel free to update it.)

On a related note, while it's true there are usually a number of parties interested in providing support, the EA case doesn't exactly support the idea you don't have to worry since there will be plenty of people jumping in to help defend you:

As stated in several adult trade publications including AVN, due to the company's economic failing, Zicari and his wife decided that they were not able to retain the legal counsel needed to successfully fight the reinstated charges with a lengthy court fight. Several attorneys involved with the case denied their lack of interest to represent Zicari.[7] However none of these same lawyers stated they would engage in a long term trial pro bono when asked.

It's possible the fact that a commercial company was involved, one which apparently still had funds, made parties less willing to give their services for free then if it was just some poor shmuck running a free website.

The Red Rose Stories is another case where the person involved pled guilty because, amongst other things, they felt they survive the long trial or prison sentence they risked [2]. (I initially mistakenly claimed they felt they couldn't afford it but reading the source it doesn't support that claim).

There's also the case of Max Hardcore who is currently spending time in prison. In his case, it appears from the article and other sources he plans to appeal so his case may eventually reach the Supreme Court [3] so he may eventually win (i.e. watch this space), but he'd still spending the time in prison.

In other words, it seems to me these cases support what I was said at the beginning as taken from the earlier discussion. There is a definite possibility you will get in trouble for obscenity if you try to push the boundaries (the chance for any specific individual is low but there) in the US. While it's possible that you will eventually win in court, it's potentially going to be a very costly for you to find out, you may even spend time in prison. If you have the finances (don't be sure you're going to be able to convince someone to represent you pro-bono) and don't mind the risk then fine. But if not, it's something you'll want to bear in mind.

Nil Einne (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You linked Encyclopedia Of Stupid:Copyrights. That page has no more sense to it than anything else on that site. It's important to understand that (1) the absence of any profit motive is not enough to make something count as fair use (I think you realize that, but surprisingly many people don't), and (2) it's your responsibility to prove that a work is free to use, not the copyright owner's to inform you that it's not. Copyright owners usually put copyright notices on their works and send cease-and-desist letters before they sue, but that's because lawsuits are expensive and risky and they'd much rather stop the infringement in some other way. Any newly created work is copyrighted, even without a copyright notice, unless the creator explicitly releases it into the public domain. -- BenRG (talk) 03:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If he is letting other people upload the images, then he'll get the cease and desist letter before a suit because of the safe harbor provisions in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, if he is in the USA. That's part of the lawsuit procedure under that law — you have to send the letter first, and can only sue if it is ignored. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lots of good responses people, and thanks to all. I will check out all the links. I will be interesting how long EoS lasts. ;-) I understand that RationalWiki has become a foundation partially for such purposes. Again, the wiki I'm thinking of might not be primarily a porn site. I'm not going to call it "Porn Wiki," "Sexy Wiki," or "Red Hot XXX Wiki." The name will likely be mundane. There will likely be no ads, much less flashly ones with pop-ups and loops to other sites, and definately not to porn sites. I might even require passwords if starts to get popular (and accessable to some puritan agents). The purpose would be for stuff that I, and other members, couldn't, for varying reasons, post on Wikipedia, sister projects, 2nd tier wikis like RW, or scatter it all over the minor wikis. Much of it will be political, musical, essays, etc; but there will also be a collection of images, not all, but likely most, of a sexual nature. Some may range from the relatively innocent--nude nymph tripping where the bright streams play (happy as the daisies that dance on her way) (the nude versions of her might be found here ;-) ), to maybe a few from the above links (perhaps with copyright issues resolved). By the way, I've never set up a web-site. Do I have to use my real name? Could I have someone sign for me (and yes, I'll let them know of the risks). Again, thanks to all for your input.206.130.173.55 (talk) 19:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Usually at some point you have to use your real name for the purposes of billing, assuming you aren't somehow magically hooking directly into the 'net for free. If you hosted it on your own, at-home server, you'd still have to set up an account with your local internet service provided, and would provide a name. If you hosted through a server farm (e.g. Bluehost or Dreamhost or whatever), you have to provide credit card and contact info. But it doesn't have to be visible; your DNS entry (the .com registration) can be "anonymized," usually for a small fee. It means that "the law" could get your name if they wanted it, but the average user could not. I don't think anybody cares if someone else does the payment/registration information, no. As far as I know it is pretty loosely regulated on the whole. The main requirements for truly accurate data are just related to whomever is billing you, not the internet registrar (ICANN), who doesn't really care very much if you have fake/wrong data on file (and never checks it, anyway). --Mr.98 (talk) 02:28, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any examples of successful legal ban that has eliminated a crime-ridden "social problem"?

I have read and heard about how attempts by western democratic governments to criminalize activities such as drugs, alcohol, firearms or prostitution have been unsuccessful in achieving the goal of eliminating supply and demand of the commodity in question. Invariably, it seems the supply and demand is driven underground, but still exists, usually associated with organized crime, often making the situation worse.

Are there any examples of a legal ban being implemented in a modern western democracy that has successfully eliminated a crime-ridden “social problem”, reducing supply and demand of the commodity and any linked crime to insignificant levels? --FemWriter (talk) 23:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe Britain's ban on slavery? But it took awhile and had to be combined with smart economic polcies. Wrad (talk) 23:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It included British warships picketing the African coast and capturing slaving ships, so it was not just policies. The book Memoirs of a slave-trader by Theodore Canot and Brantz Mayer gives details. 92.15.27.8 (talk) 20:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think duelling (at least in the US) would be one good example. WikiDao ☯ (talk) 00:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Eliminated? No. Reduced to insignificant levels? Many. Prostitution, handguns, cocaine, the Numbers game, cockfighting, dogfighting, child abuse, slavery, unsanitary food processing, and spitting indoors all were much more common before various governments banned them. --M @r ē ino 01:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

From a 21st century perspective, the employment of children during the Industrial Revolution and the working conditions they were exposed to are criminal. That's one area of society that has been drastically improved by the intervention of government. The Masked Booby (talk) 08:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking answers. --FemWriter (talk) 08:37, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hitler's election promises; unemployment under National Socialism

Is it true that Hitler never made any election promises in his election campaigns? --92.244.142.54 (talk) 23:46, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Also, is this claim true: "National Socialism within a few years made unemployment, that terrible specter of modern humanity, into only a nightmarish memory. Roosevelt, despite the new deal and billions of dollars, was never able to bring the unemployment figure under ten million."

Thanks --92.244.142.54 (talk) 23:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(1) Of course he made promises. (2) Hitler did greatly reduce unemployment, in large part by going to a virtual wartime economy early in the 1930s, as part of his rearmament strategy. Roosevelt also nearly eliminated unemployment in the US when he brought the country into the war in 1942, though. Looie496 (talk) 00:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to see the kinds of promises that were used in the 1932 election, this article by Goebbels is pretty instructive. The Nazi slogans in this period were generally pretty vague — freedom, work, bread for the people, a re-united and stronger Germany, a strong leader, etc. etc. Not so much things like, "I'll enact this specific program." --Mr.98 (talk) 01:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As for U.S. unemployment, this graph shows its lowest point post-Depression, pre-WWII is something like 14%, against a population of around 130 million, so that's over 18 million unemployed. Economists are fairly split as to whether the New Deal helped or hurt the U.S. economy. Nobody really doubts that getting into World War II helped it, though. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The section 25 points#German Party program ("National Socialist Program") explains some commitments of Hitler, and does some way to explaining whether or not they count as election promises. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I googled your quote, but I couldn't follow the links it provided, as the computer I'm using is barred from accessing hate sites. However, I wouldn't be too surprised of the low credibility of the person who made it. Articles on the Great Depression, Weimar Republic, and Economy of Nazi Germany might help.206.130.173.55 (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That US unemployment graph is not worth very much. Despite their uselessness for almost all purposes, the unemployment figures most commonly seen, as in that graph, are the Lebergott numbers, which until 1942 counted people employed by the Works Progress Administration and other government programs as being unemployed. The correct numbers are the Darby numbers shown in table 2 of our New Deal article. See James Galbraith[4] based on [5]. There are people who doubt the efficacy of the WWII stimulus Austrian economics - and pretty much the debate about the New Deal is between a reality-based community and an ideologically driven one.

Here is a handy table, unfortunately using the incorrect numbers. Unemployment is a fraction of the labor force, not the total population, so is calculated on the basis of about 50,000,000 workers during the Depression. Even with the invalid Lebergott numbers as in that handy table, unemployment was under 10,000,0000 for much of the New Deal, and else only a bit above it; with the right Darby numbers, it was under for essentially all of FDR's presidency. So the claim in the OP's PS is false. There was a reason FDR won 4 elections.John Z (talk) 08:33, 26 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One of 1930s Germany's biggest problems was an acute labor shortage. "Solving" the unemployment problem would be a very easy promise to keep! DOR (HK) (talk) 03:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]