Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
Nick
Hi Nick,
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
I think there are similar provisions in Canadian law to protect us, should we actually get to the point where we are hosting servers and such. But we should really cross that bridge when we come to it.
Since we are a chapter of WM, and not content servers even, I don't believe he has grounds to add us to such a suit at this time.
In fact, it is an excellent time to start a chapter, since he can't (seriously) argue that we libeled him _prior_ to our creation.
There will of course always be such risks, of course. It is important to recognize they exists, but not let them chill our effort to bring knowledge to all.
Gerald.
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
No. Never.
It needs to be VERY clear in the bylaws and in any kind of communication issued by the chapters that they are NOT the host of the projects and have NOTHING to do with the content.
This is the reality today, and the reason why Wikimedia has chosen to make chapters independant organisations rather than subisdiaries, so that the Foundation would not have to be subject to different sets of laws.
Delphine
So but what happens if we got money to set up servers in Canada, much as non-Chapters have done elsewhere.
For example, there is Yahoo in Korea, Lost Oasis/Jexiste in France/Luxembourg/Switzerland, Kennisnet in the Netherlands. If you try and access Wikipedia in those countries, your likely getting the information sent to you from those local servers, instead of the Tampa machines.
Nick
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
No. Never.
It needs to be VERY clear in the bylaws and in any kind of communication issued by the chapters that they are NOT the host of the projects and have NOTHING to do with the content.
This is the reality today, and the reason why Wikimedia has chosen to make chapters independant organisations rather than subisdiaries, so that the Foundation would not have to be subject to different sets of laws.
Delphine
~notafish NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
Wikimedia-ca mailing list Wikimedia-ca@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-ca
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
So but what happens if we got money to set up servers in Canada, much as non-Chapters have done elsewhere.
For example, there is Yahoo in Korea, Lost Oasis/Jexiste in France/Luxembourg/Switzerland, Kennisnet in the Netherlands. If you try and access Wikipedia in those countries, your likely getting the information sent to you from those local servers, instead of the Tampa machines.
Those are all caching servers. There is no hosting of content as such. Believe me, this has been cleared with many lawyers ;-). The French ones are not there at all anymore.
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Delphine
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
So but what happens if we got money to set up servers in Canada, much as non-Chapters have done elsewhere.
For example, there is Yahoo in Korea, Lost Oasis/Jexiste in France/Luxembourg/Switzerland, Kennisnet in the Netherlands. If you try and access Wikipedia in those countries, your likely getting the information sent to you from those local servers, instead of the Tampa machines.
Those are all caching servers. There is no hosting of content as such.
So they keep backup copies, just in case the Tampa servers are destroyed by an errant asteroid? They don't help defray the strain on the servers at all?
Believe me, this has been cleared with many lawyers ;-). The French ones are not there at all anymore.
Still listed here... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
Delphine
-- ~notafish NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Those are all caching servers. There is no hosting of content as such.
So they keep backup copies, just in case the Tampa servers are destroyed by an errant asteroid? They don't help defray the strain on the servers at all?
No, they "cache" the content. I'm not that good at this whole technical stuff but it works something like this: -The squids cache the content when it is called from anyone (they take the last update from the db in Tampa and show the page) - When a non logged in user calls for a page, the squids look if there is a more recent version of it in Tampa, if not, they serve the page they have in store. - All logged in traffic goes to Tampa
45% of the overall traffic is served by Amsterdam. So to answer you question, yes, it relieves the strain ;-) Yaseo (Yahoo) works the same ways, with squids
On a legal standpoint, squids (cache) are considered mirrors, not the original thing.
Cache and backups are different things, but even backups would not be considered the real thing, since they are static.
Believe me, this has been cleared with many lawyers ;-). The French ones are not there at all anymore.
Still listed here... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
Not any more. Thanx for pointing it out.
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
Hmmm, Canadians probably have faster access than most people, being closer to FL.
Delphine
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
No, they "cache" the content. I'm not that good at this whole technical stuff but it works something like this:
For someone not technical, you did an excellent job. :)
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be
hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Just for completeness - do any chapters rent squid servers around the world, or are these all under WMF billing? If a chapter can rent (and not be responsible for the content) then that is good, I think.
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The
reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
I do think there is a lot of stuff we have to do prior to considering pouring effort into content serving, but there is no reason to backburner it. We should set up a list of things that we would like to do, and I think servers would be a great thing to do. We just have to assign it a proper priority, and be reasonable about how long it will take until we are able to "do it right".
Gerald.
gerald lists wrote:
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The
reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
I do think there is a lot of stuff we have to do prior to considering pouring effort into content serving, but there is no reason to backburner it. We should set up a list of things that we would like to do, and I think servers would be a great thing to do. We just have to assign it a proper priority, and be reasonable about how long it will take until we are able to "do it right".
By the time the chapter is viable we should have an idea of what different people can and want to do.
Ec
On 4/21/07, gerald lists geraldablists@gmail.com wrote:
Just for completeness - do any chapters rent squid servers around the world, or are these all under WMF billing? If a chapter can rent (and not be responsible for the content) then that is good, I think.
Actually, the squids that serve Amsterdam were bought and are owned by Wikimedia Deutschland. And this is where I meant the lawyers stepped in, we made sure that this was not a liability, either for the Foundation or the chapter. This echoes Ray's explanation of the ISP safe harbours.
I am not sure what you mean by "rent" here, though.
Delphine
On 4/23/07, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/21/07, gerald lists geraldablists@gmail.com wrote:
Just for completeness - do any chapters rent squid servers around the
world,
or are these all under WMF billing? If a chapter can rent (and not be responsible for the content) then that is good, I think.
Actually, the squids that serve Amsterdam were bought and are owned by Wikimedia Deutschland. And this is where I meant the lawyers stepped in, we made sure that this was not a liability, either for the Foundation or the chapter. This echoes Ray's explanation of the ISP safe harbours.
Thanks -- that does clarify the point.
I am not sure what you mean by "rent" here, though.
Often, it's about the same price to lease servers through a 3rd party as it is to purchase them outright. The differences are in cash flow, and in a for-profit business the cost of leasing (interest costs) can be deducted against profit realized.
Rent in this instance was a fancy word for leasing, and I had (wrongly, it seems) assumed that is how these servers were procured.
Thanks, Gerald
gerald lists wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by "rent" here, though.
Often, it's about the same price to lease servers through a 3rd party as it is to purchase them outright. The differences are in cash flow, and in a for-profit business the cost of leasing (interest costs) can be deducted against profit realized.
Rent in this instance was a fancy word for leasing, and I had (wrongly, it seems) assumed that is how these servers were procured.
When you analyze a lot of leasing arrangements they tend not to be as beneficial as outright purchase. Three year leases are common, and unless the buyout at the is a nominal $1.00 you have nothing left. You can then be sold a whole new contract and whole new servers. A high buyout price at the end of a contract tends to encourage starting a new contract.
I believe that many of WMF's servers have been in operation for more than three years. Thus if a lease allows you to keep the computer for $1.00 at its end any additional benefit you get out of it will cost you nothing. Perhaps that computer may not do all that a brand new one will do, but there are still less critical and less urgent tasks that it can fulfill adequately.
Tax deductability is not relevant to a corporation that pays no tax. Even with tax deductibility outright purchase is still preferable to a lease, but it is less bad than it would be in a non-taxable situation.
To analyze what is happening in a lease one needs to solve an exponential equation to determine the effective interest rate, and compare the results with available bank interest rates. You can ignore the effects of sales taxes since these tend to be proportional.
For any given month the payment includes an implicit interest element such that P=p*(1+i)^n where P is the actual amount of the monthly payment, i is the monthly interest rate and n is the particular payment month You then sum these terms over the life of the leasing contract, and add in adjusting terms for the down payment at n=0 and the final buyout where n equals the length of the contract. Do a bit of algebraic manipulation on this to apply the principles for summing a geometric series and you end up with an exponential equation that you can solve for i. Whenever I've subjected a lease to this kind of analysis I've ended up with effective interest rates in excess of 20%. (BTW, I graduated some time back from an Ontario high school when most of the basics for such an analysis were part of Grade 13 algebra, though I don't think we ever dealt with precisely this kind of problem then.)
So no, 3rd party leases, are not cheaper. It's true enough that they are short term easier on the cash flow, but a bank loan would accomplish the same thing. If you need a lot of servers over an extended period of time buying will give you five for the price of four.
I hope this doesn't sound like too much of a rant. :-)
Ray
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard wrote:
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
Generally I agree with this. One exception that has crossed my mind is for wikisource.ca. Unlike many other important countries which use life+70 Canadian copyright law is still based on the Berne Convention principle of life+50. This could allow us to host material from Canadian authors whose situation is uncertain in other countries. The other issue would relate to publishing archives in a manner similar to what Danny has mentioned in regards to the papers of Thomas Jefferson; a Canadian site may help us to develop better arrangements with the owners of the archives..
Another interesting question is what would we do with the millions ;-) that we expect will be donated to Wikimedia Canada. If we are to become a tax exempt charity Canadian tax law requires that donated funds be used for charitable purposes in Canada.
Ec
On 4/21/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
On 4/20/07, Delphine Ménard wrote:
In any case, the primary goal of a chapter should definitely not be hosting content, but making sure that the content hosted by the WMF is spread and used as much as possible.
Certainly wasn't going to be a primary goal, but one to explore. The reasoning was that it would provide Canadians with better, more reliable access to the site. I'll put it on the backburner.
Generally I agree with this. One exception that has crossed my mind is for wikisource.ca. Unlike many other important countries which use life+70 Canadian copyright law is still based on the Berne Convention principle of life+50. This could allow us to host material from Canadian authors whose situation is uncertain in other countries. The other issue would relate to publishing archives in a manner similar to what Danny has mentioned in regards to the papers of Thomas Jefferson; a Canadian site may help us to develop better arrangements with the owners of the archives..
Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
Another interesting question is what would we do with the millions ;-) that we expect will be donated to Wikimedia Canada. If we are to become a tax exempt charity Canadian tax law requires that donated funds be used for charitable purposes in Canada.
Believe me, there are *always* ways to develop and help the Wikimedia projects without having to hand cash to the Foundation. And you will find enough ideas to use the millions.
From content acquisition, to software development, to raising
awareness, there is a lot to do. And do not forget that you have a definitive advantage over other countries, anything you start in Canada can be exported to both English and French-speaking countries ;-)
Delphine
Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 4/20/07, Nicholas Moreau nicholasmoreau@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
No. Never.
It needs to be VERY clear in the bylaws and in any kind of communication issued by the chapters that they are NOT the host of the projects and have NOTHING to do with the content.
This is the reality today, and the reason why Wikimedia has chosen to make chapters independant organisations rather than subisdiaries, so that the Foundation would not have to be subject to different sets of laws.
I should add to this that this is not simply a matter of being prohibited by the Foundation. It has to do with safe harbours for ISPs. Much of this revolves around the idea that ISPs have only limited editorial control over what is in the contents. There are some very sensitive legal issues here.
As I have already said, there are separate projects which we could host, but before that happens we will need to consider carefully the legal implications of the structure that we choose,
Ec
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
Perhaps this isn't the best time to create a legal entity around Wikimedia Canada.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070419.wwikipedia0420/B...
Could this guy add us to his lawsuit, even though we have no control over the content of the site, even less so than the Wikimedia Foundation does? Under US law, the Foundation is fine if they comply and take down offending content at request of the offendee, but we'd be under Canadian law, and I don't know if like provisions exist.
I think that it's wonderful that Crookes should be responsible for an increase in traffic to this list. :-P
How could the prospective Wikimedia Canada possibly be sued for something that allegedly happened before it was created?
Crookes seems to be developping a reputation for barratry. He seems to have filed his case against Wikipedia here in B.C., hoping to rely on laws relating to the reciprocal enforcement of judgements to collect in Florida. As I read that law it seems to apply only to judgements that relate to debt.
In general terms anybody can sue anybody. There's no requirement that the suit be a winning one.
Ec
On 4/20/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Nicholas Moreau wrote: How could the prospective Wikimedia Canada possibly be sued for something that allegedly happened before it was created?
Well, I was using him more as a general, easily recurring incident.
Nick
wikimedia-ca@lists.wikimedia.org