[WikiEN-l] Terms of use

Sat Jun 19 22:28:36 UTC 2004

I think those legal documents do make differences.

As one of the more visible admins at japanese wikipedia, I occasionally 
receive legal threats and requests from others. If the submission standards 
include such clause as "the conflicts among wikipedians regarding wikipedia 
contents are first resolved via the internal arbitration process of 
wikipedia, and you agree not to bring the matter to the court," then it 
reduces a lot of uncertainty surrounding those threats.

If the submission standards specify choice of law and jurisdiction, again, 
it reduces legal uncertainty.

So, I would say it does matter a lot.

Regarding the terms of use just introduced, it seems that it creates a fair 
ground for the Wikimedia Foundation to claim that it is not responsible for 
copyvios, defamation, privacy invasion, and other legal problems in any of 
the past versions of a page. Those pages are not for distribution, and 
anyone using the wikipedia is supposed to know that.

So, again, it changes a lot of things.

But in terms of user behaviors, maybe not much change happens as a result of 
these documents. People might behave more or less the same way regardless, 
unless there is some kind of campaign to notify them of the change. But my 
understanding of these pages is that they are designed to reduce legal risk 
for the Foundation resulting form the current practice, without really 
demanding behavioral change in people.

Tomos

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