On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > <snip>
This still leaves me > wondering if WMF Legal could be involved in the legal defense of the > reusers if they acted in good faith in attempting to comply with the > license terms as they understood them on Commons. <snip> > Acting in good faith will, at best, mitigate against damages. It isn't actually a defense against liability. If people are getting sued after doing absolutely everything right, then I could maybe imagine getting involved. However, in many licensing disputes there is a legitimate case that the reuser violated the terms of the license (e.g. by neglecting details regarding authorship / attribution / etc.), often due to ignorance of what the license requires. In many such cases, the reuser may well face a likelihood of losing if the case ever made it to court. In a world of "good faith" we might expect that reusers who made mistakes out of ignorance to be treated kindly, but the legal system isn't exactly geared towards kindness. I think that we (the community + the WMF) should do more to help ensure license compliance and educate reusers about appropriate attribution, etc. However, I don't think that WMF Legal should get involved in cases where someone wanted to do the right thing but failed. There is no need to waste our resources on third-party cases where there is a significant risk of losing. -Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
