Legal and Community Advocacy

You can get involved:

	Spread the word about the changes to the legal and community teams.
	Help brainstorm answers to the key questions here.
	Participate in the discussion on the team's talk page

While there are many Wikimedia projects, at their root, they are all maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation in the State of Florida, USA. The Foundation faces a wide array of legal issues on a daily basis. Its legal needs are often related to copyright, trademarks, marketing, donations, tax and the law of associations and partnerships. The Foundation often needs advice on how to handle those threatening litigation or who are disruptive to the community, in addition to regular transactional and licensing issues. In many respects WMF is like any business; in others, it faces challenges that are rare for an online organization.

The legal team

The Wikimedia Foundation is represented by the General Counsel and his team. They provide legal advice to the Foundation, not to individual editors.

Research

Note: This page includes preliminary ideas on an issue that may be relevant to the Wikimedia community's mission to share free knowledge. This page is a stub to encourage community input and improvement. If you have additional information, please improve this page. This page is not legal advice or a representation of the viewpoints of the Wikimedia Foundation. The legal team can only represent the Wikimedia Foundation on legal matters, so this is not official advice to the community. The legal team cannot provide consultations, and contacting the legal team does not create any confidential relationship. This page is not intended to address a specific factual situation.

General announcements

• Golan v. Holder decision announcement
• Creative Commons content on Facebook

Intern research

Case summaries
UMG v. Veoh	Andrew Alire
SABAM v. Netlog	Chris Civil
Legislative summaries
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ("ACTA")	Stephen LaPorte
Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act ("OPEN")	Stephen LaPorte
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act ("CISPA")	Stephen LaPorte
Research questions
MIDI Files and Derivative Works on Wikimedia Commons	William Hahn
Copyright status of a screenshot that contains copyrighted images	Lisa Gee
Summary of restored copyright under the URAA	Stephen LaPorte and Chris Civil
Copyright and close paraphrasing	Lisa Gee
Copyright and NASA images	Chris Civil
Copyright status of works originating from countries without copyright relations with the U.S.	Chris Civil
Copyright and Pictorial Representations of Architectural Works	Lisa Gee
Copyright status of flags and logos from international organizations	Chris Civil
Background on the moral right of integrity	Chris Civil
Copyright status of utility items	Lisa Gee

Blog posts

See the legal blog for additional posts

• Transfer of Wikipedia sites from GoDaddy complete, March 9, 2012
• The power of free knowledge, March 29, 2012

Important pages

Legal discussions

• Loriot Signature case in German court
• Terms of use

Information on Legal and Community Advocacy

• Announcement: creation of Legal and Community Advocacy
• New! Brainstorming page!
• Legal and Community Advocacy/Historical
• Legal and Community Advocacy/Legal Policies
• Office actions

Logs of previous office hours sessions

• 2011-12-15
• 2011-12-01