Hello
A new mailing list was opened this week. Its name is Juriwiki-l(a)mail.wikimedia.org. Its
moderator is Soufron.
Primary goals of the list
In the past few months, we observed an increasing need of legal counselling. Needs may be
related to the following issues
* requests from editors or readers with regards to our content from a legal perspective
(in particular copyright violations, defaming content etc...)
* setting up of new chapters (e.g. bylaws to write and discuss)
* contracts with other organisations (e.g. hosting contracts, CD Rom publishing
contracts...)
* trademark issues (official request of trademarks, contracts allowing logo uses, recovery
of lost domain names...)
* non-profit status, income revenue service...
* ...
Who can post to the list ?
Anyone may post to this list (at least, until we begin to have spamming issues)
Who will be member of the list ?
Only a limited number of people will receive the mails.
The recipiendaries will be
* the members of the WMF board (so, for now, Jimbo, Angela, Anthere, Tim and Michael)
* the presidents of local associations (currently, Ryo for the french board and Kurt for
the german board)
* Legal advisors. For now, three have agreed to join, Soufron, Aurevilly and Micha�l Snow.
Others have been contacted but have not answered yet. Others might be soon contacted.
Why will be that list quite private ?
All of these issues may require input from professionals essentially, and many of them
will require discretion. Hence the choice for a separate private mailing list.
Naturally, when some issues would be beneficial to be discussed in public, the discussions
will occur on Foundation mailing list, or meta, or on the irc channel as usual. Similarly,
when editors are directly involved in an issue, they will be put in copy of the mails
exchanged on the juri list. The limited number of automatic recipiendaries is set up both
to garantee discretion on certain topics, and to foster the creation of a team of legal
advisors.
Will the number of members stay limited or can it increase ?
We hope that this number increase over the next months. If you are a regular editor of one
of wikimedia project and are a professional in the legal field, you are most welcome to
join the legal team (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/legal where we will try to keep
information updated). If you are an editor and know another editor which could help,
please tell us and contact him. We need help in this field, and the bigger we grow, the
more help we will need. Obviously, help from several countries will be very helpful, in
particular in countries where 1) there is or will be soon a local chapter or 2) we are
setting up collaborations with local firms or organisations.
Will the language be english only ?
Preferably, but when enough people share the same language to fix an issue essentially
related to a specific country, another language than english should be used if that makes
things easier. In this case, very short summaries could be added in english.
Could someone be removed from the list ?
Yes, in case of serious disruption or obvious legal inability. Except I, allowed to be
both unable and disruptive :-)
How can you, as an editor or a developer, make use of this resource and help ?
Though this list is not kept secret, I'd like to ask you not to display it
proeminently on projects. I think it would be best it is kept open for sending mails, but
as soon as too much spam is received, we will have to restrict access. Similarly, this
list is not meant to deal with all the daily complaints most projects receive. Most issues
can be and should be dealt by editors (example, a person complaining of copyvio or the
fact a site is not respecting fully our license... is everyone business and everyone
should feel empowered to take care of it as much as possible). So, please, do not
liberally hand out this address. However, when you think an issue is getting out of hand,
require the board attention or input from a professional, please contact us.
What is the secondary goal of this list ?
Though we managed quite well till now, the growing number of legal threats on the biggest
wikipedias suggest that one day or another, a threat will transform itself in a reality.
Even if we are entirely in our right, we will need help to defend our case. It is best
that we are organised and ready for it when it happens.
Secondly, it was reported more than once, that in front of "professionals", we
needed to appear more business-like. Having good legal support in deals we are trying to
negociate, should be very beneficial.
We are growing very fast. While we should not fall into bureaucracy, nor give positions
which might reveal impossible to give to another one later on... or might cause diplomatic
issues, I think it is important we organise team work around some issues. The legal team
seemed one of the most required team right now.
There is a last point. Legal issues are amongst those activities which are essentially
done behind the doors and I think most of you do not realise they are done at all ;-)
Still, people like Aurevilly or Soufron (and others I do not mention here, Aurevilly and
Soufron are those I know best) give a lot of this invisible time to the project. Others
might have the ability to help... but just do not realise how they could do it. I hope
that the existence of the team and of the list will help them realise where they could get
involved.
Thank you for all those who give invisible work in any cases :-)
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