Hi all,

The Wikimedia Foundation is working on comments to submit to the US Copyright Office, which has asked for input on about the state of the current legal system that protects online platforms (like us) from liability for copyright infringement for content we host. That system includes a notice-and-takedown process for copyright owners to request that we remove content from the Wikimedia projects if it infringes their copyrights. We participated in a first round of comments[1] and subsequent roundtable discussions[2] earlier this year

In this second round of comments[3], the Copyright Office is particularly interested in “empirical research studies” that would provide them with more information to help them decide what changes to the law (if any) to recommend. The deadline for submitting studies to the Copyright Office is March 8. 

We don’t have time to conduct an original research study between now and the deadline, but we were hoping that the folks on this list may be able to point us to relevant existing research. Anything recent that could in some way relate to Wikimedia and copyright—including community-based mechanisms for improving and removing content on Wikimedia projects generally—would be good for us to know about.

On the off chance any of you are doing relevant research currently, please get in touch with me. We’d be happy to support your research if we can, and we may want to let the Copyright Office know about it even if it won’t be published by March 8.

Thanks, everyone, and please let me know if you have any questions about this issue.

Best,

Charles

[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/04/06/save-safe-harbors-open-web/ 

[2] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/06/16/copyright-law/

[3] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-11-08/pdf/2016-26904.pdf