[Foundation-l] "Terms of use" : Anglo-saxon copyright law and Anglo-saxon lawyers : a disgrace for Continental Europeans

Mon Dec 12 16:18:15 UTC 2011

For some unexplained reasons, the whole contents of my message is not
showing at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-December/070807.html
. Here is another copy again:

Le 12 décembre 2011 17:14, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> a écrit :
> Le 11 décembre 2011 19:02, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> a écrit :
>> Hi.
>>
>> The "Terms of use" rewrite is starting to wind down. The current draft is
>> here: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use>.
>
> From the point of view of Continental Europe, where creators enjoy
> advanced copyright laws which protect their attribution right, I think
> this implementation of the - creator belittling - US copyright law on
> Wikimedia projects is a disgrace. What the licensing section of this
> draft terms of use is saying is that the WMF simply disregards the
> attribution rights which are granted by law in their countries. It is
> humiliating.
>
> By the clever use of attribution licenses, there was a way to
> conciliate continental European laws and US or British laws. The WMF
> decides not to do so, and to stubbornly push the US-copyright law
> point of view. It is a pity.
>
> Perhaps the WMF should not have relied on a US lawyer alone. Perhaps a
> team associating a US lawyer with a continental Europe lawyer would
> have been better.