[Wikipedia-l] Jennifer's dresses

[Jimmy Wales]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> If a copyright owner would complain (did this ever happen?), only Jimmy
> is at risk,

In one sense, this is true.  But in another sense _the project_ is at risk.

Realistically speaking, the odds of anyone trying to make a big deal
out of anything that we are doing is very remote.  From a legal
standpoint, as an ISP, I'm only required to "takedown" material put up
by users upon a formal complaint from a copyright holder.  Of course
I would do that in a heartbeat -- we're not here to fight the Napster fight,
that's for sure!

But other than direct legal action, there are other serious risks of
taking too lax an attitude about copyright violations.  We purport to
relicense the content under the GNU FDL.  Without some reasonable
assurances that our content is legitimately unencumbered, it will be
difficult for others to take our content and redistribute it in other
media.

Nonetheless, I most certainly echo Lars' sentiment that being gentle to
newcomers is important to the wiki way.  We're a community of love and
co-operation, not controversy and fighting.

--Jimbo