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In the beginning of March 2010, a few hundreds files have been deletedon the French Wikisource following a request from Gallimard, a leadingFrench publisher. [1] The Wikimedia Foundation received a request fromEditions Gallimard to takedown content from the French Wikisource.This request is based on Editions Gallimard's claim that "Wikisourcecontent in the French language targets the French public, andtherefore, under French conflict of laws principles, the copyright lawof France applies to this content." They were deleted, according toMike Godwin, following the Online Copyright Infringement LiabilityLimitation Act [2]. These texts are from a dozen authors, and some areeven in the public domain in France.In addition, I receive a personal letter, as "the main editor" ofthese texts, according to Gallimard. We didn't receive any informationfrom the Wikimedia Foundation, and I know the details only because Ihave been personally involved.I understand that there is a 15 business days delay after which thematerial "must be put back up" (cf. Wikipedia) if Gallimard does notfile a lawsuit. Now three months later, we didn't receive anyinformation from the Foundation about this, and the texts are stilldeleted. Many contributors are obviously not very happy, and feel thatthe Foundation submitted to the pressure of a commercial publisher.Comparing with the National Portrait Gallery affair on Commons, itlooks like a double standard was applied.Just a few days before these texts were deleted, I asked Cary what wasthe official opinion of Wikimedia Foundation about texts which are inthe public domain in USA, but not in France. I was told that "thecommunity is entitled to decide by itself".Comments?Regards,Yann[1] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Demande_des_%C3%A9ditions_Gallimard_du_15_f%C3%A9vrier_2010[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act 