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

[David Gerard]

On 11/07/2009, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.


Note that the most recent attempts by the UK legal system to extend
their reach to actions in the US (libel judgements) is resulting in
new US law specifically disallowing such things.

I hadn't realised at the time of my original post that the editor in
question was American.

To recap: A UK organisation is threatening an American with legal
action over what is unambiguously, in established US law, not a
copyright violation of any sort.

o_0


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


I posted to the comcom list, cc Mike. The Wikimedia twittersphere is
going fucking batshit about this (unsurprisingly), it may have legs.
No-one at the NPG who could deal with this will be in until Monday
(it's 1:30am here); I wonder if they'll be surprised at the orderly
queue of people at their door with pitchforks and torches.

I scribbled a blog post to try to make stuff clearer:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2009/07/11/sue-and-be-damned/


- d.