[Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Is that possible without putting WMF lawyers in a tight spot?
>
> Sometimes. Sometimes not. (The issue is not so much putting lawyers in a
> tight spot as it is one of making WMF more vulnerable, e.g., by revealing
> defense strategies.)

Surely having a known defense strategy would beat having no defense
strategy at all, which basically is the situation now. I can accept
that the WMF cannot refuse take-down notices itself, because that
would increase its liability not only to the current claim, but to
future claims as well. But why not support the community in issuing
counter-claims, by telling them that the possibility is there, and
what the consequences are (both the positive one that the WMF is then
likely to re-instate the material, and the negative one that the one
doing the claim will be the one liable to get sued if the other party
decides to do so).

The situation now is that a single take down notice will have the WMF
take down the material, basically saying to the community "we have to
do this". How do you expect people to issue counter-claims if they
don't even know about the possibility of doing so?

> Or we can reasonably expect them to ask for real legal advice from (or
>> paid by) the WMF and _then_ accept the _known_ risk to file a
>> counter-notice.
>>
>
> What happens if they follow the legal advice from WMF and then face
> liability anyway? (This sometimes happens even when the best advice is
> given.)  WMF is not insured against the malpractice lawsuit that community
> members might bring in that case.

I'm sorry, but I am getting more and more the feeling that for the
board and the executive the foundation is more important than the
projects. To me, this answer is an example to that. Surely, it is easy
enough to put an answer in such wordings that the likelihood of losing
such a suit (in the already unlikely circumstance that such a suit
would actually be brought forward) are negligible. And because of the
remaining minute chance that there is a minute chance that the
foundation loses a non-negligible sum of money, you leave the
community on its own. It's sad. The foundation exists to support the
projects, not the projects to give the foundation a reason to exist.

> John Vandenberg writes:
>
> .. find generic legal advice ... or ...
>>
>> .. find a lawyer among the community who can help.
>>
>
> There is plenty of generic legal advice about how to respond to takedown
> notices. A little Googling will turn up some for you.

So that's the foundation's reaction? If you don't like us taking down
material, just find out yourself what can be done about that - and
then find out how that something is done that can be done about that?
You seem to be more tightly bedded with not only valid but also
invalid copyright claimers than I ever had thought possible.



-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com