David Strauss wrote:
The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
This is always very important to keep in mind.
There seems to be a plausible argument that Italian citizens cannot upload normally copyrighted material under the fair use exception. But there's a huge difference between what the Italian Wikipedia can host and what Italian citizens may post to it.
And if you think that you can fix the problem by making the Italian Wikipedia have policies that fit within Italian law, what about Italians who edit the English or other Wikipedias? They're not suddenly exempt from Italian law because they're working in another language.
There is also a very large Italian immigrant community in North America that can still understand its ancestral language. I can't see them feeling bound by Italian law.
Perhaps we should put together guides for legal interaction with Wikipedia. For example, Wikipedia editors in Italy must obtain permission for Wikipedia to use the content from the copyright holder *and* post a fair-use justification for use in jurisdictions with fair use or similar exceptions.
Is such a set of guidelines pssible? I think you underestimate the difficulty of a task that threads its way through such a jungle of law.
We must distinguish between language editions of Wikipedia and national borders.
Many countries have analogues of fair use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
The English Wikipedia allows only a relatively safe subset of fair use, so another country's system need not allow everything the U.S. does to make use English Wikipedia materials.
Allowing only a subset of fair use is within Wikimedia's rights. If no fair use is allowed at all the results could be more severe than expected.
Assuming the person posting the material lives in Italy, the image should probably carry the Microsoft "used with permission" template *and* the fair-use justification. The former is to protect the person posting the material; the latter is to protect re-use of the content where fair use or fair dealing are allowed.
If the person posting the material lives in the U.S., they would only need to post the fair-use justification because that covers their use, Wikipedia's, and future organizations'.
Notice that I don't care to what language edition the person is posting.
I broadly agree with most of what you have said.
Ec