[Foundation-l] Let's switch to CC-BY-SA

Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton at gmail.com
Tue Sep 11 16:37:30 UTC 2007


> You should correct that misconception wherever you find it. There are
> important legal considerations and issues surrounding the Foundation's
> liability if they are deemed a publisher.
>
> The Foundation publishes very little; it is the *contributors* who use
> servers and resources provided by the Foundation who publish. You don't hold
> a company who offers free blog space responsible as a publisher, and the
> Foundation relies on the same provisions to protect them from being sued.

I'm well aware of the legal issues if the WMF is the publisher. Just
because it would be preferable for it not to be doesn't make it the
case. A free web host doesn't incorporate your content into their
site, it just hosts your site. Wikipedia is a complex web application
which incorporates user generated content, that's very different from
a free web host.

I don't know what the legal definition of a publisher is, but the most
obvious definition is "one who makes something available to the
public". The WMF does that for Wikipedia content in the same way a
book publisher makes the contents of a book available to the public.



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