[Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright

[Robert Rohde]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Jimmy Xu <xu.jimmy.wrk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>  These days at the Village Pump of zhwiki, many wikipedians are
> arguing about whether Wikimedia project should apply to the US
> Copyright Law that is where the servers were placed, or the local
> ones, for us, that is the P.R. of China Copyright Law. These thread
> came from a disagreement of fair-use text of news in article, so I'm
> willing to find some (kind of) official resolution. Thanks a lot.
>
> Jimmy_xu_wrk at zhwiki
> 06/25/2009
>

All projects must be compliant with US law.  Many projects whose language
lends itself to a particular national focus additionally work to be
compliant with the national laws relevant to their target audience.  The
decision of whether or not to also try and follow national laws (e.g.
Chinese law in your case) is left at the discretion of the individual wiki's
community.

So in short, you must comply with US copyright law.  You have the option of
further restricting content based on Chinese copyright laws, if your
community so chooses.

-Robert Rohde