On 1 May 2012, at 00:01, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 30 April 2012 23:52, Roger Bamkin
<victuallers(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Thomas, the legal position is far from clear.
I'm hoping to get a steer
on current custom and practice. I see that lots of wifi's have tick boxes
for T&c's .... why?
Am I happy to take legal advise from WMUK? Thats not what I asked.
I'm quite happy to see if they can point me at a relevant law or know of an
example of good custom and practise.
I didn't say WMUK and you haven't asked WMUK... what does WMUK have to
do with it?
Perhaps "WMUK community" (or UK Wikimedia community, or however you want to
phrase it) makes Roger's email clearer?
Wikimedians are generally so good with legal issues (as is particularly well demonstrated
by the average Wikimedian's knowledge of copyright law), and also researching things
(well demonstrated by Wikipedia articles...), that Roger's request for pointers
towards legal positions and important guidelines, or case studies that already exist,
seems to me to be a very logical request. He wasn't asking for legal advice - he was
asking for pointers to advice and information given by others.
Going to a lawyer is expensive, particularly if you count it in terms of the number of
financial donations to Wikimedia that it equates to (roughly, it would be about 10-15
donations per hour). I can well imagine Wikimedians being up in arms if WMUK was
continually asking lawyers questions where the answers might already be well known in the
community - indeed, I'd be one of the first to be up in arms in that situation...
So please, assume good faith here. And if anyone has answers to Roger's questions,
please share. :-)
Thanks,
Mike