On 11/06/06, James D. Forrester james@jdforrester.org wrote:
This would significantly blur the line between the Foundation and the community, and (for the obvious reasons) almost certainly make the Foundation legally liable for copyright violations without anything like the elasticity that we currently enjoy. I would strongly counsel against it, but then I'm sure the legal group is aware of the issues anyway.
I really hope you're wrong about this. Are we only going to treat copyright issues seriously when they're raised by outsiders threatening to sue? Do I have to ask some copyright holders to complain to the Board before any action is taken or help offered? I should hope not... I don't think the line is blurred. We already have WP:OFFICE on en.wp and the fr.wq project was closed down. Oh wait they are both due to threats of legal action... this really smacks of a "don't ask, don't tell, we don't want to know" kind of attitude, which hardly seems like a good way to run anything. I hope it is not accurate.
Maybe my idea of a CLO is a bad idea. OK fine. But if there is community consensus that we need some help dealing with these copyright issues, and we go to foundation-l and say, "As a community and a project, we are explicitly asking for your help," I would be very disappointed if WMF was to say, "Actually, we would prefer to let you struggle along, it makes it easier for us to feign ignorance, you see." Maybe someone can come up with some other idea that is more palatable to the Legal folk.
I will just repeat that my intention with this topic is to establish whether or not there is community consensus that we need some help, at the moment I'm only speaking for myself.
Brianna