[WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Thu Aug 18 01:19:05 UTC 2005


Unless there is something particularly strange about the copyright
situation in Iran, we should generally respect Iranian copyright law as
best we can, the same as we do for other countries around the world.

The situation with respect to treaties or non-treaties with the US seems
to me to have very little impact on this.  As always, we have to balance
 various factors in thoughtful ways.  Simply saying "Well, this is legal
under US law, so let's do it" is not a very compelling argument.

A similar situation exists with "fair use".  Fair use doctrine is
significantly better in the US than in other jurisdictions, which is a
fine thing, but German Wikipedia, for example, follows more restrictive
German law on this point.  Why?  Because part of our goal is re-use in
Germany.

--Jimbo




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