[Foundation-l] Re: Copyright issues...walking on thin ice

Sun Aug 8 06:39:19 UTC 2004

S.Vertigo wrote:

>Angela:
>  
>
>>>The legal risk lies with the user who uploaded it and claimed it was
>>>      
>>>
>>>fair use, not with the Foundation.
>>>      
>>>
>
>That may be the letter of the law interpretation, but
>for "the foundation" to make a policy of deflecting
>all such responsibility to its contributors, would
>only bode well for any competing project that chose to
>show a little more philosophical and legal backbone.
>Pioneering projects need to be pioneering, not
>capitulating or betraying to their own supporters,
>especially if the mistakes are honest ones in the
>realm of intel property. In any case, the inclusion of
>material is a community decision, and so the
>foundation as a facilitator for the violation, (by an
>implied community decision) is legally responsible.
>Does going apenuts with compliance paranoia to a
>particular legal system comply with the larger goals
>of being globally accessible and philosophically
>equitable? I.D.T.S...
>
>What exactly constitutes a "community 'decision'" when
>anything can be changed anytime, is wobbly.
>
I too thought that the response was peculiar.  Passing the buck onto 
some naïve individual who may not understand copyright law at all evades 
responsibility.  The argument is even less tenable when we don't even 
know the legal identity of the contributor. 

Collective responsibility and collective courage are the head and tail 
of the same coin.  If you flip that coin and it consistently lands the 
same way you have a biased coin.  Collective responsibility means that 
we stop people from uploading blatant copyright violations.  With 
collective courage we are able to give the contributor the benefit of 
the doubt.  We give him an opportunity to argue his case in the context 
of copyright law, and if he makes a convincing case we accept his 
material with eyes wide open.  This does not mean that we won't review 
our decision if it is seriously challenged by a duly interested party, 
nor does it mean that we will goo to the wall with the decision  
Sometimes we need to say, "This material may still be copyright, but 
it's 30 years old, the publisher went bankrupt 25 years ago, and the 
writer or photographer died 20 years ago without a family and without 
mentioning copyrights in his will.  Maybe we should take a chance." 

Ec