[Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright

[teun spaans]

IANAL, but I suppose three things must be considered:
- US law, where the servers are based
- the country where a work originates
- the country to which the wikipedian belongs.

The US Laws will have to be followed as far as copyright is concerned, as
the servers are in the US.

The second thing is the country where a work originates. For example, in
Germany there is panoramafreiheit, in some other countries there is not.
When I make a photo in Germany, I can only publish that photo when i make it
from a public raoad. German law does not grant me copyright on pictures of
copyrighted items inside a museum/garden/house. When I am in Italy,
different rules for my photos apply.

As a dutch citizen, I must also comply with Dutch law. There are not very
many differences between Dutch and US copyright laws, but there are some. I
can not recall them now.

In addition to copyright law, there may be other laws to consider. For
example, if the publication if Hitlers Mein kampf is forbidden, I will not
upload that text to wikibooks. I will leave that to someone else.

i wish you well,
teun spaans

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:38 AM, 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
>
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