[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Please HELP save Wikipedia history ! (urgent)

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2010/2/21 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>> 2010/2/20 Ray Saintonge:
>>
>>> Probabilistic arguments are difficult to establish when the majority
>>> still believes in legal certainty in the same way that it believes in God.
>>>
>> I am not quite sure what you wanted to say :-) Anyway - this cited
>> sentence is for me a nice expression of "0 tolerance" copyright
>> paranoia definition. In fact, most attorneys  say usually to their
>> clients that there is nothing like legal certainty as long as the
>> court verdict is known and being innocent does not give you 100%
>> probability that you won't be sentenced as guilty. Everyone can be a
>> suspect of committing a crime and it is just a matter of probability
>> that vast majority of people are not taken to jail. This is just
>> because the number of beds in jails is limited :-)
>>
>>
> My apologies if my analogy wasn't clear.  Many people tend to treat the
> Bible as the word of God that must be valid in all circumstances,
> choosing to ignore any ridiculous results that that may produce.
> Similarly, people unfamiliar with law also tend toward a strict
> interpretation of statute without regard to any other influences, or
> without any understanding of the body of judicial interpretation that
> surrounds those statutes.
>

Yes.. This is typical adminship POV on Wikimedia Commons nowadays and
it spreads to many other Wikimedia projects including meta, as more
and more Wikimedia projects decides to transfer all of their files to
Commons. Legal decision should be taken out from project's communities
"jurisdiction"  and given into hands of professional lawyers or at
least people who had copyright law practical training. Otherwise
things are based on current flows of moods of amorphous communities,
which is quite often unpredictable and has very little in common with
real legal problems, or it is even sometimes based on false over
interpretation of law imposed by copyright paranoia guerillas. On
Commons it is so easy to start deletion process and vast majority of
cases are not analyzed by anyone who has a real, practical knowledge
about copyright law. Just add copyvio template and with around 6-7
hours your picture is deleted.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html