[Foundation-l] Status report on logo copyright issues at Swedish Wikipedia

[Mike Godwin]

David Castor writes:

The use of these logos are thus the only thing standing in the way of
> stating that all material from Swedish Wikipedia can be freely reused,
> without any further permission.


Is there any obvious legal problem with stating that (for example) "All
material from Swedish Wikipedia may be freely reused, without further
permission, with the exception of the Wikimedia trademarks and copyrighted
logos, for which separate, specific permission for reuse must be sought"?

Yes, that is a longer sentence. But in my experience the kinds of people who
agonize over copyright permissions are uniformly capable of parsing longer
sentences.

Note that my suggestion handily dodges the need to instruct anyone about
whether the Wikipedia image in the corner of the page is freely licensed for
reuse. It also avoids the need to explain to someone what constitutes part
of the user interface and what doesn't.  It also doesn't require a
non-law-trained user to parse issues of trademark versus copyright. So in
fact it is a simpler, user-friendlier solution that seems consistent with
David's statement of what Swedish Wikipedians want to be able to do.


--Mike