On 24 October 2011 12:56, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We wouldn't need a lawyer to look at every case - ones where the > author has released it under a free license should be fine, for > example. Not remotely. Even at the most basic you would have the whole Freedom of panorama issue and is the author actually the rights holder problem. > There are experts on international copyright law that could > give opinions on a wide range of jurisdictions. How wide? Because I've run across questions on subjects ranging from North Korean to Burundian copyright law. > While you never know > for sure until it has been decided in court, a good lawyer ought to be > able to give you an idea of what a court is likely to decide. In some > cases, they may have to say "I don't know", but I'd much rather have > an expert that doesn't know than a bunch of laymen that think they do. Commons has a pretty good record of being able to deal with copyright issues. > It's the job of the courts if there is a disagreement. As long as > no-one is complaining, we should be fine just trusting a lawyer. As no-one is complaining we could trust a magic 8 ball. The point is that commons tries to act before people complain which means that copyright nerds are a reasonable and far more cost effective solution than lawyers. -- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
