On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
This whole debate makes the point that when the WMF legal counsel gets
involved because some outside organisation has sent him a letter, and
this debate between lawyers then becomes public, the community
sometimes looks like a deer caught in the headlights, unsure whether
they should debate the issue, or apply what counsel has said, or ask
counsel for further advice.
The problem with the first two approaches is that the debate might end
up with the wrong result, and if people say "but we followed the WMF
legal counsel's advice" (even if they misinterpreted what he said),
that might be bad for several reasons. The problem with the third
approach is that the WMF legal counsel doesn't scale, and you can't
ask him everything about every image (though if someone thinks it
worth contacting him, they should always do so). The best of several
poor options seems to be for the community to judge as best they can,
contact the WMF legal counsel in rare cases only, and take note if an
external request leads to the WMF legal counsel over-riding a
community debate and learn the lessons from that.
We have a voluminous body of policy for the legal questions we need to
address without the assistance of the WMF (e.g. copyright policies at
various levels, WP:NLT, etc.), but I don't see the issue with asking
for Mike's input in situations with unusual circumstances. We have a
tendency towards knee-jerk reactions, whether its "OMG DELETE!" or
"piss off with your censorship." The FBI Seal / Badge issue is a
pretty good example of why we actually need Mike's opinion to limit
the risk posed by the overly cautious or the overly incautious.
Nathan