On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 09:55:25PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowsk wrote:
If it's copyrighted by anyone living in Europe, European laws apply.
All that matters to Wikimedia is what is legal to have on the server in the US. When you edit on a US-based server then the laws of the US dictate what is legal to have on that server. That doesn't mean you are immune to the laws of your own country, but as soon as you post something to the Wikimedia server then US law takes over.
Location of the server is really a secondary issue here. It may be important for libel laws and stuff, but ownership over copyrights is obviously a global thing. You can't have copyright over something in one country, while somebody else has copyright over it in others (of course what are your rights here is country-specific)
Oh, and we want Wikipedia to be distributable in Europe too, don't you remember ?
And I don't really have to care about US laws at any point, only server owners has ;)