On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:37, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
The only catch is that by filing the counter-notice you are putting your money where your mouth is and legally asserting that you have the right to post the work (so make sure that this is correct or you may end up in a lawsuit).
Absolutely. If more people were to accept responsibility for these materials it would spread the risk most wonderfully.
The main problem is that people edit WP on their free time as a hobby, and they do not possess large sum of money of their family budget to offer to nondeterministic amount of risk. People are not familiar with the legal process and risk, as you people said, which means they cannot measure the risk either. They most often doesn't even plan to privately pay a lawyer to tell them about it, since it's not a wee amount.
So either we wait until people want to spend their private money to lawyers to define the risk and only accept mostly low risk counternotices, or to enroll to be crash test dummies. Both highly unlikely.
Or we can reasonably expect them to ask for real legal advice from (or paid by) the WMF and _then_ accept the _known_ risk to file a counter-notice.
I do not say we have to do that, only that I believe people won't do it any other way.
Peter