legal issues

Question

Maybe there should be a Category for Legal or Legal Issues.  I just created a Free Space page for Copyright and Fair Use sources, so we have a place to go for information about those issues.

Comments

Don't we generally reserve categories for things with a genealogical purpose (although that is certainly stretched to the limit in some cases)? I think your FSP is a great idea which would cover most topics of a legal nature in WT.

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There is a Genealogical Help category 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Genealogy_Help

But I'm not sure that's right for this page.

I wonder if there should be a higher level category concerning Research; it could fall under that while at the same time associating the page with genealogy. ;-)

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1) Re the FS page

It's a useful resource  of links to information  about  copyright as it applies in the US. However, laws vary by country. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright,  

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama. Maybe the title should be made more specific. 

1b) The use of images of historical documents or pictures may be restricted by the terms and conditions of an internet host.  https://www.familysearch.org/legal/terms

2) re categorisation. T Stanton's point about categories serving a genealogical purpose  is valid but there are  other pages re copyright. 

It would be good to have some way  of finding these easily (I knew of the existence of the two below  but had to do a google search to find them)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Galleries_and_Collections_which_have_given_Permission_for_use_of_Images

 detailed guidance provided by the Scotland Project https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Scotland_-_Copyright_and_Images_Guideline

Also important and  related is the wikitree guidance on plagiarism https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Copying_Text#:~:text=As%20a%20general%20rule%2C%20do,relevant%20text%2C%20use%20quotation%20marks.

(Sorry for long comment. I did mean to answer but pressed wrong button)

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Helen, perhaps we need to propose that Copyright be a topic on the Help Pages (it is not presently) so these various FSPs and related pages can all be found from a central location. Yes, these various pages need to be specific about what country's copyright law is being discussed since they vary significantly and WT crosses borders.

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Regarding help pages and categories: it would need to be clear that any pages with legal advice are not supported or endorsed by WikiTree. Any legal advice that we give would have to be carefully vetted by lawyers, and once written, could not be updated, maintained, or edited by members.

Answer 1

https://www.wikitree.com/about/terms.html

Answer 2

This appears to be covering a fair amount of the same subject as this G2G question.  For the very large majority of WikiTree memebrs, we're not lawyers.  I've had occasion to read legal interpretations of legislation, and it is quite picky as to terminology.  I don't think we should go past our terms of use as linked by Natalie.