[Foundation-l] The Wikimedia Foundation seems to want to repudiate Creative Commons 3.0 article 5, and make text contributors liable for every kind of complaint

Nathan nawrich at gmail.com
Thu Oct 6 13:34:20 UTC 2011


On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to say very clearly that without the provisions included under
> Creative Commons 3.0 article 5, it will be very difficult for
> volunteer contributors to consider working for a project that makes
> them liable to all kinds of complaints. For that reason, the proposed
> "Indemnity" clause of the proposed new terms of use is a tremendous
> change. This sort of major change should be discussed in a very wide
> consultation with the community, with a "sitenotice" announcement on
> all projects, rather than making a surreptitious change as is being
> proposed on Meta.
>
> See also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use#Terms_of_use.2316._Indemnity:_You_don.27t_mean_to_nullify_the_Creative_Commons_terms.2C_do_you_.3F
>

Also posted on the meta page:

You are misunderstanding the interplay between these sections. The
section of the CC license you quote disclaims warranties; such
disclaimers have limited applicability and scope, and can't be used to
avoid liability arising in other ways. Additionally, and obviously,
nothing in the disclaimer allows the contributor to violate the terms
of service agreement, and the indemnity clause applies only to such
violations.

~Nathan



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