Hi Ting,
Thank you for sharing your view. It is interesting in many aspects,
and I think that I support its spirit but I feel obliged to add a
couple of points.
2014-04-07 15:39 GMT+02:00 Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de>de>:
[...]
Even though the Foundation had increased its legal
department and had tentatively tried to work out an approach to support its
community in legal conflict basically it is still working with the old
strategy: In case there is a legal case in a foreign country the Foundation
will avoid the call of the court while the Chapter will deny any
responsibility for the content. This leaves in the end all potential hazards
to the volunteer who contributed the content. In case of a court suit he is
probably the one that have the worse legal support and had to take the
charge privately, even if he handled legally and in good will.
I can confirm that, this is precisely what Wikimedia italia is doing
right now (and rightly so) for the infamous "20 million € lawsuit"[1]
you should already know about. Plus, the fact that we do not have any
responsibility over the projects nor we want to "intervene" or
"manage" them is in our bylaws[2] too.
It is worth adding that following the law and jurisprudence in Italy
(but mind that IANAL) the mere possession of servers can be enough for
an Italian judge to consider you responsible of the contents. That's
why Wikimedia Italia does not want any server.
Moreover, the association itself is not a legal person and its rights
and duties are exercised in the person of his legal representative,
that is the chair (in Italian, presidente) So in the aforementioned
case the lawsuit is on the shoulders and head of Frieda herself (which
was the chair and legal representative at the time).
You can imagine that in no way we can think that a single person
accepts this kind of burden (I mean, we have already received a 20M€
lawsuit and we don't even have any servers!).
[...]
This also means that the chapters, as far as there is
one, should be able to
take the responsibility for the content and the hosting of those servers in
their country. They should be obliged to provide legal consultation and
defense to the community, which means a distribution of the legal defense
from a central point into the world, to the chapters and directly to the
communities. Indeed the legal consultation and protection of the community
is in my opinion one of the most missed duty of the chapters and the
Foundation to the movement.
Well, Wikimedia Italia is providing assistance to Frieda since day 1,
of course. it is also worth mentioning that the case should reach its
end sometimes this year (it needed only 5 years)
Cristian
(speaking in my personal capacity)
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_50#Wikimedia_It…
[2] {{it}}
http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/Statuto
These are probably outdated:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/bylaws
We have modified our bylaws in 2009 to become a registered non-profit: