[Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

Fri Aug 1 11:42:15 UTC 2003

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 ;)