[Foundation-l] Re: [Juriwiki-l] Re: Copyright complaints

Wed Feb 15 15:26:57 UTC 2006

On 2/14/06, David Newton <davidp.newton at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an immensely serious issue since it exposes Wikipedia,
> Wikisource and the Wikimedia Foundation, not to mention the
> contributors to the sites, to legal liability. I wanted a definitive
> statement over copyright and I did not get that statement.

Some points:

1) We're dealing with a matter of copyright law and not a basic,
everyday one.  On legal questions where there isn't a huge amount of
precedent and case law, you can't get a definitive answer.  Thus, not
many people feel qualified to comment on what the legal situation is.
2) The Foundation, I'm sure, does not want to expose itself to
liability by giving legal advice to contributors.

-Matt