But in setting it up in the US, don't you only have to care about US law? Cheers,
Michael On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote: > Michael van der Kolff <mvanderko...@gmail.com> writes: > >> IANAL, etc., but how about getting some legal advice on this? It seems >> to me it wouldn't be nearly as cut and dried as all that; have you >> examined whether or not such a scheme could be set up in such a way that >> makes it a DMCA safe harbour? > > DMCA safe harbor is a property of a US law and does nothing to prevent > lawsuits in Europe. That's part of the complexity. > > I didn't say that debian-mentors would pose legal problems necessarily, > only that it's not equivalent to NEW. I know that the way Debian handles > NEW is fairly legally safe because it was set up that way on the advice of > lawyers. I don't know if there are other ways to set this up with > different requirements and a different profile that would be equally safe. > I suspect that someone would need to ask. > > The Debian project gets pro bono legal counsel, but one of the > disadvantages of that relationship is that it's very slow to get advice on > specific subjects because we ask a lot of strange questions and the amount > of legal advice we can get is fairly limited. I believe the DPL is > already managing a fairly long backlog of legal questions, so I wouldn't > be too hopeful about getting legal advice in a particularly timely > fashion. > > The problem with all legal issues like this is that they're very much like > security issues: doing things properly and doing things improperly are > almost indistinguishable in practice until a problem occurs, at which > point you discover you were doing things improperly. It's very difficult > to distinguish between doing the right thing and being too cautious, since > they both look exactly the same on a day-to-day basis (nothing happens), > and very similar to doing the wrong things and just getting lucky > (likewise, nothing happens). That's why people tend towards being > conservative and doing exactly the same thing as was done somewhere else, > since there *is* safety in numbers in legal precedent and even accepted > best practice, and you have a better chance of being warned in advance by > a lawsuit against someone else. > > Right now, my guess is that the current debian-mentors setup is doing the > "wrong" thing (in that few effective precautions are being taken against > distributing unredistributable material) and getting lucky, in that it's > both not really a target and the people using the service are generally > trying to do the right thing and any uploads of non-redistributable > material is both by mistake and not of the sort of thing people would sue > over. But in the current environment where nonsense like SOPA and PIPA in > the US are actually being seriously considered (if, thankfully, not yet > passed), it's probably worth being somewhat paranoid about things that get > the official imprimatur of the project. And I'm certainly not a lawyer > and this is just my guess. > > -- > Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org > Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87y5t2xc4w....@windlord.stanford.edu > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cafbbo2q5lj095vujzpc0j-zjhu0nkhyyrnbc8kggbinudcu...@mail.gmail.com
