On 1/30/07, rfrangi(a)libero.it <rfrangi(a)libero.it> wrote: One of the terrible problems (not with Wikipedia specifically but the Internet in general) is that cross-border copyright issues remain rather muddled. Imagine for a moment a Wikipedia in which all content is hosted in the US. If a US editor uploads an image which clearly falls under US fair use doctorine (say a PR photo, for which the owner could not reasonably survive a motion to dismiss if they sued WP for infringement in the US), US law protects the editor, Wikimedia Foundation, and presumably readers worldwide. If a German editor uploads a photo from a German company PR site (I am informed Germany has no Fair Use, but am not an expert here; this is a hypothetical example), to a German language Wikipedia hosted in the US, it's not clear that German law has any effect on the servers in the US or the Wikimedia Foundation. US courts have generally refused to allow foreign copyright law to apply to web content in the US. The German editor might be at risk for a suit, however. The situation is more complex if we have servers hosted somewhere which doesn't recognize the right. Technically, someone in that locale could possibly sue using their rules over content on the en.wikipedia site, depending on local law. This would seem to indicate that we're in danger just by having foreign hosting. The paranoid response to this would be to kill off all fair use immediately, and/or pull down all foreign colos (France, Netherlands, South Korea). The more reasonable response is that this issue needs to get settled out in international law, and that we should keep donig what we're doing until that happens. We are the least likely target for someone seeking to clarify that law via lawsuit... WMF has no money to speak of, in traditional terms, and its "intellectual property" is all GFDL over which ownership is sort of a nebulous hold. It's perfectly reasonable to assert that what we're doing is the right thing to do, from an IP rights standpoint, for all concerned, and that it's likely that the global regime that works out will allow what we're doing. If we were being super-duper-paranoid, we'd have to require not just a GFDL disclaimer on each page, but formal verified identification of each person making contributions and their right to contribute that content. Even in the US, there are employers that assert that any work "during working hours" is work for hire owned by the company, even discussions on bulletin boards or Wikipedia edits. Theoretically a large fraction of total edits might be of questionable original copyright status (if editor X says it's GFDL released, but his workplace has a legal ownership restriction, then editor X may not legally be in a position to release the work under the GFDL...). This hasn't been an issue in open content, but has been litigated in various open source software related lawsuits. Our working assumption there is "so what?", and that nobody's going to come after the foundation for any of the IP involved, again because there's no money in it and the horrible publicity which would ensue. The same approach to Fair Use is called for. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com