Angela: That may be the letter of the law interpretation, but for "the foundation" to make a policy of deflecting all such responsibility to its contributors, would only bode well for any competing project that chose to show a little more philosophical and legal backbone. Pioneering projects need to be pioneering, not capitulating or betraying to their own supporters, especially if the mistakes are honest ones in the realm of intel property. In any case, the inclusion of material is a community decision, and so the foundation as a facilitator for the violation, (by an implied community decision) is legally responsible. Does going apenuts with compliance paranoia to a particular legal system comply with the larger goals of being globally accessible and philosophically equitable? I.D.T.S... What exactly constitutes a "community 'decision'" when anything can be changed anytime, is wobbly. S --- Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: > Angela_ wrote: > >>Even if this is fair use, what's stopping the > copyright holders from suing the wikimedia > foundation, and incurring a great deal of legal > fees? > > That's interesting. This is the first time I hear > this (but I haven't > followed the discussion very much, either). So what > are you going to do > if the uploader is an anonymous IP address? > >>Is the foundation willing to pursue lawsuits > against them for violating copyright law? > > > If an image really is fair use, it is not > violating copyright law. > At least not in the U.S. > > The German Wikipedia have a policy which disallows > fair use completely. > Which is reasonable, seeing as most of the users of > the German-language > content are going to be German, Swiss, Austrian or > possibly > Luxembourgian, and those countries don't have a > "fair use" law. > > We are protected to some extent by the [[Online > Copyright Infringement > > Liability Limitation Act]]. We would take the > images down if someone > > sent a valid takedown notice, so presumably we > would avoid legal risk > > that way. > Again, this is interesting. I didn't know there was > an extra Act for > this. This begs the question would other countries > have a similar law. > Timwi > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Its understandable. Official positions not only must remain uncolored, but also moderately defensive of the institution. Any offical doctrine is going to draw a sharp and non-intuitive line, unless dealing with specific cases. Language is just codewords, and paradoxically enough, private discussion can be more open. I dont think that its remotely this conditional. Alex made it clear that it's all pretty unclear as to how a case could come down. The most touchy aspects are all very general and current issues for law, not at all particular to WP. To stick-neck-out or not-stick-neck-out; that is the question. And this is in degrees: the *degree of caution expressed (in direct proportion to the number of nuts invested) versus the degree to which such caution is {{{understood}}} to stifle the goal of development. The balanced and cautious community decision led to the well understood and vigilant requirement for attribution. This is good enough IMNSHO. S __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail