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Re: Foundation policy on linking to website that violates copyright
Robert Rohde wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Ilya Schurov <ilya.schurov@noo.ru> wrote:
> <snip>
>> They say that we put excessive burden on the editors and it is simply
>> not necessary to investigate facts of copyright violation on third-party
>> websites (at least, since there are no requests from copyright holders),
>> because we have no explicit statements of the Foundation that we have to
>> do it.
> <snip>
>
> On the narrow issue of en:WP:C and Intellectual Reserve v. Utah
> Lighthouse Ministry, neither is expected to impose a positive burden
> on editors. The court case is predicated on the fact that they
> already knew they were linking to copyright violations and continued
> to do so intentionally.
>
> The enwiki policy is simply a statement that we will remove links if
> we become aware that they are associated with copyvios, but it is fine
> for an ordinarily editor to link to anything unless he has already
> become aware of a problem. No editor is required or expected to do
> copyright investigations before adding a normal link.
Yes, it's clear. Nobody is going to require editors to do copyvio
investigation of third-party resources before linking them. It's a
conflict resolution matter: e.g. one editor claim that some site
violates copyright and therefore we shouldn't link there, while the
other editor try to put this link into the article and argue that
copyright issues are not important here. ArbCom believes that the site
under consider indeed violates copyright. Should we consider this as an
argument to remove such link, or just ignore it?

--
Regards,
Ilya Schurov.

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Re: Foundation policy on linking to website that violates copyright [ In reply to ]
Ilya Schurov wrote:
> Robert Rohde wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Ilya Schurov <ilya.schurov@noo.ru> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>> They say that we put excessive burden on the editors and it is simply
>>> not necessary to investigate facts of copyright violation on third-party
>>> websites (at least, since there are no requests from copyright holders),
>>> because we have no explicit statements of the Foundation that we have to
>>> do it.
>> <snip>
>>
>> On the narrow issue of en:WP:C and Intellectual Reserve v. Utah
>> Lighthouse Ministry, neither is expected to impose a positive burden
>> on editors. The court case is predicated on the fact that they
>> already knew they were linking to copyright violations and continued
>> to do so intentionally.
>>
>> The enwiki policy is simply a statement that we will remove links if
>> we become aware that they are associated with copyvios, but it is fine
>> for an ordinarily editor to link to anything unless he has already
>> become aware of a problem. No editor is required or expected to do
>> copyright investigations before adding a normal link.
> Yes, it's clear. Nobody is going to require editors to do copyvio
> investigation of third-party resources before linking them. It's a
> conflict resolution matter: e.g. one editor claim that some site
> violates copyright and therefore we shouldn't link there, while the
> other editor try to put this link into the article and argue that
> copyright issues are not important here. ArbCom believes that the site
> under consider indeed violates copyright. Should we consider this as an
> argument to remove such link, or just ignore it?
OK, let me put my question in the following way:

What is the status of this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright, which says: "Giving external
links to copyright-violating content is prohibited"? Is it a policy
every project should follow?

Thanks,

--
Regards,
Ilya V. Schurov

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Re: Foundation policy on linking to website that violates copyright [ In reply to ]
Ilya Schurov wrote:
> OK, let me put my question in the following way:
>
> What is the status of this page:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Copyright, which says: "Giving external
> links to copyright-violating content is prohibited"? Is it a policy
> every project should follow?
>
Yes, they should, that's part of our general respect for copyright laws.
Note that this is phrased specifically in terms of links to infringing
content, rather than talking about links to a site, since parts of a
site may be free of infringements. And as was pointed out earlier, this
does not mean there's a duty to investigate, just that we should act
appropriately when infringements are discovered.

--Michael Snow

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