Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day geni,
On 9/18/06, User:Unforgettableid unforgettableid@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be? Can a tree, a river, or a building be copyrighted? You claim that there "may" be rights issues but you have not cited any American law which back up your claim.
If you are the creator and you are not in the US or made the item outside the US you need to consider more than the US legal system.
But if you're in the USA, as we see again and again, you can blithely pretend that the US's POV is all that matters and shamelessly flaunt your ignorance of the rest of the world.
But this is precisely the goal---Wikipedia is sunk if it must use the *intersection* of all copyright laws in the world, under which nearly nothing is permissible to distribute. Instead, it's carefully set up so that all the core servers and legal mechanism are in the United States, so we can use only one set of copyright laws.
Of course individual contributors must deal with their local governments, but the point is that Wikipedia itself should not subject itself to dozens of competing restrictions.
-Mark