On 03/03/2008, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
By this I assume BC means a "cease and desist". I believe this is de facto false. While it is true a lawyer could file a suit for anything, any case being brought, without having made any preliminary action to correct the issue, would be, imho, thrown out of court. The first thing a judge looks at is, "have you attempted to correct this out of court" ? That is did you make any attempt to settle this without wasting the court's time ? Which is why documenting what you did is so important to winning your case. If you did nothing, like for example, not even informing the offending party that there was a correctable offense, then your case won't win. That's my opinion.
Indeed. In civil court battles, your level of civility does gain you points. That Wikimedia takes a proactive approach to ferreting out possible copyright violations - and BetacommandBot is a perfect example of how we take proactive care with this stuff - and always tries to fix problems first would in fact get us a long way in the event of a real fight. So far we've yet to have a real fight. Cross fingers ...
- d.