John,
The WMF has a large legal fund to support volunteers and projects like
Commons, which from my memory has only ever been paid out on a couple
of occasions (if anyone has a link to a list, I love to see it). At
least part of the 89,000 USD mentioned seems suitable for this
emergency funding, especially as Wikimedia Sverige cannot have been
expected to plan for these costs.
Has WMF legal been approached to give them a chance to say yes?
Thanks,
Fae
On 7 July 2017 at 16:41, John Andersson <john.andersson(a)wikimedia.se>
wrote:
Today we received some bad news in Sweden. The
Swedish Patent and Market
Court ruled against Wikimedia Sverige in a lawsuit filed by Visual
Copyright
Society in Sweden (BUS). The case concerns images
of public art online,
more
specifically in the case of our website
Offentligkonst.se, a service
created
by Wikimedia Sverige using images from Wikimedia
Commons.
The ruling means that Freedom of Panorama is eroded and the public space
is
diminished. It is a detrimental loss for our
projects. Next we will talk
to
our lawyers and WMF legal team to see what our
remaining legal options
are.
Our lawyers however believe that success is not
very likely if we would
decide to move forward.
Intensive efforts to advocate for our elected officials to change the
outdated and problematic clauses in Swedish copyright law will be
initiated
during the year.
We have also started a crowdfunding campaign to cover some of the cost of
the legal expenses and fines of about 750,000 SEK stated in the verdict
(around 89,000 USD) and for future national and international lobbying
efforts. Please consider making a donation at
http://wikimedia.se/en/donera,
even if it is a symbolic sum. Simply add “BUS”
in the comment, and all
the
money will be used for these costs.
Some useful links (in Swedish):
The legal argumentation from the court:
http://www.bildupphovsratt.se/sites/default/files/upload/
stockholms_tr_pmt_8448-14_dom_2017-07-06.pdf
pressreleases/domslut-krymper-det-offentliga-rummet-i-sverige-2054679
A timeline of what has happened:
https://se.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offentligkonst.se/Stämning
Best,
John
- - - -
John Andersson
Executive Director
Wikimedia Sverige
Phone: +46(0)73-3965189
Email: john.andersson(a)wikimedia.se
Skype: johnandersson86
--
faewik(a)gmail.com
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
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