Lars Aronsson wrote:
If a copyright owner would complain (did this ever happen?), only Jimmy is at risk,
In one sense, this is true. But in another sense _the project_ is at risk.
Realistically speaking, the odds of anyone trying to make a big deal out of anything that we are doing is very remote. From a legal standpoint, as an ISP, I'm only required to "takedown" material put up by users upon a formal complaint from a copyright holder. Of course I would do that in a heartbeat -- we're not here to fight the Napster fight, that's for sure!
But other than direct legal action, there are other serious risks of taking too lax an attitude about copyright violations. We purport to relicense the content under the GNU FDL. Without some reasonable assurances that our content is legitimately unencumbered, it will be difficult for others to take our content and redistribute it in other media.
Nonetheless, I most certainly echo Lars' sentiment that being gentle to newcomers is important to the wiki way. We're a community of love and co-operation, not controversy and fighting.
--Jimbo