[Foundation-l] What's appropriate attribution?
Mike Godwin
mgodwin at wikimedia.org
Mon Oct 20 21:21:58 UTC 2008
Thomas Dalton writes:
> The legal implications do certainly need to be considered, however.
> Moral rights to attribution may well get in the way. Mike Godwin can
> advise on US law, but someone needs to make official contact with
> lawyers in other jurisdictions and get advice.
FWIW, any lawyer who deals with copyright in any kind of international
environment is aware of moral-rights issues. If specific questions and
concerns come up, of course, I have a network of international lawyers
I can reach out to.
> This mailing list is not the place for a detailed discussion
> of the law, but that discussion does need to take place (between WMF,
> CC, FSF and lots and lots of lawyers from all over the world - this
> will probably cost a lot of money since you'll be lucky to find people
> willing to work pro-bono is every significant jurisdiction, but is
> essential).
I don't think you're correct to suppose that "lots and lots of
lawyers" are required. Copyright is, after all, very largely
harmonized among very many nations as a result of several
international agreements. Also, since United States is a bit of an
outlier when it comes to enforcement of moral rights, we wouldn't
impose a U.S. norm on how to interpret or understand moral rights of
attribution. In implementation, as it happens, I think the moral-
rights issue will turn out to be less of a practical problem than you
imagine (because I don't think attribution problems will generate
enough friction for us to worry about). Moral-rights issues tend to
arise when substantial authorship and attribution questions are
obvious and clear -- in short, not the kind of authorship and
attribution issues that normally arise in a collaborative enterprise
like a Wikimedia project.
--Mike
--Mike
More information about the foundation-l
mailing list