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

Mon Dec 12 19:56:05 UTC 2011

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
We've been reaching out to people for months to express their viewpoints
for consideration. I know Geoff has been very pleased with and impressed by
the informed feedback he's received. There's still time. If you'd like to
come by the talk page to explain how you think it can be improved, I'm sure
Geoff would be interested in your concerns.

You might first want to review the active Terms of Use (<
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_use>), as it could be helpful
to point out what (if anything) you believe has changed in terms of
attribution licenses between *that* document, which was last updated and
approved by the international Board of Trustees in 2009, and this.

Maggie