On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
This whole debate makes the point that when the WMF legal counsel gets involved because some outside organisation has sent him a letter, and this debate between lawyers then becomes public, the community sometimes looks like a deer caught in the headlights, unsure whether they should debate the issue, or apply what counsel has said, or ask counsel for further advice.
The problem with the first two approaches is that the debate might end up with the wrong result, and if people say "but we followed the WMF legal counsel's advice" (even if they misinterpreted what he said), that might be bad for several reasons. The problem with the third approach is that the WMF legal counsel doesn't scale, and you can't ask him everything about every image (though if someone thinks it worth contacting him, they should always do so). The best of several poor options seems to be for the community to judge as best they can, contact the WMF legal counsel in rare cases only, and take note if an external request leads to the WMF legal counsel over-riding a community debate and learn the lessons from that.
We have a voluminous body of policy for the legal questions we need to address without the assistance of the WMF (e.g. copyright policies at various levels, WP:NLT, etc.), but I don't see the issue with asking for Mike's input in situations with unusual circumstances. We have a tendency towards knee-jerk reactions, whether its "OMG DELETE!" or "piss off with your censorship." The FBI Seal / Badge issue is a pretty good example of why we actually need Mike's opinion to limit the risk posed by the overly cautious or the overly incautious.
Nathan