[Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the National Portrait Gallery ...

[George Herbert]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/11 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>> ... the National Portrait Gallery appear to be sending legal threats
>> to individual uploaders, after the Foundation ignored their claims as
>> utterly, utterly specious.
>>
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee/NPG_legal_threat
>>
>> The editor in question is US-based.
>>
>> So. What is WMF's response to this odious attempt to enclose the commons?
>
> I don't know if the WMF can/will do much. When we've discussed this
> situation hypothetically in the past the consensus was that we would
> all rally round and pay for the appropriate legal representation
> required (I hereby pledge £10). Wikimedia UK may also be able to help,
> I don't know (we don't yet have a lawyer, but for something this
> specific we can find one). I don't know if WMUK wants to get involved
> with this sort of thing but if it does it could be a useful vehicle
> for collecting the funds. I have cross-posted this to the UK list.
>
> I imagine the user in question has no choice but the fight the case,
> since he doesn't have the power to fix the alleged infringement (the
> commons community may decide to remove them, but our community tends
> to be of the opinion that we shouldn't bow down to such legal threats,
> especially under non-US law). I don't know as much about UK copyright
> law as perhaps I should, given my choice of hobby and my location, but
> I would be surprised if there was enough creativity or work involved
> in taking a photograph of a painting for it to be independently
> copyrightable.


Technically, the user could just ignore this - a lawsuit in a UK court
without relevant jurisdiction, under US law as applies, can be
ignored.  A default judgement against him might be entered, however,
and that might make future travel to Europe difficult.

One might suggest attempting to get criminal charges for barratry
brought in the users' home jurisdiction in the US, but that is
probably a stretch.

I hope someone's made sure Mike is aware... ?


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com