On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
This still leaves me
wondering if WMF Legal could be involved in the legal
defense of the
reusers if they acted in good faith in attempting to comply with the
license terms as they understood them on Commons.
<snip
Acting in good faith will, at best, mitigate against damages. It isn't
actually a defense against liability. If people are getting sued after
doing absolutely everything right, then I could maybe imagine getting
involved. However, in many licensing disputes there is a legitimate case
that the reuser violated the terms of the license (e.g. by neglecting
details regarding authorship / attribution / etc.), often due to ignorance
of what the license requires. In many such cases, the reuser may well face
a likelihood of losing if the case ever made it to court. In a world of
"good faith" we might expect that reusers who made mistakes out of
ignorance to be treated kindly, but the legal system isn't exactly geared
towards kindness.
I think that we (the community + the WMF) should do more to help ensure
license compliance and educate reusers about appropriate attribution, etc.
However, I don't think that WMF Legal should get involved in cases where
someone wanted to do the right thing but failed. There is no need to waste
our resources on third-party cases where there is a significant risk of
losing.
-Robert Rohde