On 11/06/06, James D. Forrester <james(a)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