[Foundation-l] Fwd: [WL-News] Wikimedia Foundation in danger oflosing immunity under the Communications Decency Act

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/5/21 Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com>:
>   
>>  We'll be able to see why when the court throws out the allegations
>>  against WMF? I fail to see what about the Wikinews article would make
>>  that less likely to happen,
>>     
> In a civil action, being seen to play nice is very important indeed
> and gets you lots of points. The courts are perpetually clogged, the
> charges to a litigant for bringing a case are well below what it
> actually costs the taxpayer, and people are very much expected to do
> everything they can to resolve problems before it gets that far.
> Mostly this works. (WMF and its projects have policies of playing nice
> as far as is reasonably possible, not just for this reason but because
> it's important to our reputation and people are scared by how powerful
> we are already.)
>
>   
This is an important point, and clogging in courts knows no 
international boundaries.

There will of course always be a few bloody-minded obsessives determined 
to take any dispute to its bitter end, only to be awarded $1.00 in 
nominal damages.  No organisation should feel that its behaviour is 
hamstrung by this small group.

Ec