lawyer

Note: For legal ethical reasons we unfortunately can only represent the Wikimedia Foundation and cannot be the attorney for the community or movement organizations, though the legal team often provides strong support to the community in many ways consistent with Wikimedia Foundation goals.

There are many Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, that are all hosted and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. As the Legal Department for the fifth largest website in the world, we oversee all legal matters for the Foundation and focus on key initiatives to help support the community consistent with our Foundation goals and values. We deal with a wide range of issues and projects, including policy drafting, trademark and copyright law, international law, employment law, litigation, fundraising and grant law, domestic and international contracts, privacy law, ethics, internet law, and non-profit corporate governance.

For general issues related to content on or using Wikipedia and other projects.

• For a more complete list of WMF policies, see the Policies page.

For local policies on the status of non-free content on Wikimedia projects, see the non-free content page.

Below are some spaces that Legal may update with announcements or preliminary discussions on legal issues.

• Wikimedia Blog posts categorized under "Legal" deliver important announcements to the community on new Legal initiatives, legal rulings involving Wikimedians around the world, and other legal or governance issues that may be of interest to the Wikimedia community.
• Wikilegal includes preliminary ideas and research notes on potential legal issues that may be relevant to the Wikimedia community’s mission to share free knowledge. Wikilegal is a stub to encourage community input and improvements.
• Quarterly review documentation: January 2015

The Wikimedia Foundation wants to ensure that the content that we host can be re-used by other users without fear of liability and that it is not infringing the proprietary rights of others. In fairness to our users, as well as to other creators and copyright holders, our policy is to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the formalities of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Pursuant to the DMCA, we will terminate, in appropriate circumstances, users and account holders of our system and network who are repeat infringers. However, we also recognize that not every takedown notice is valid or in good faith. In such cases, we strongly encourage users to file counter-notifications when they appropriately believe a DMCA takedown demand is invalid or improper. For more information on what to do if you think a DMCA notice has been improperly filed, you may wish to consult the Chilling Effects website. If you are the owner of content that is being improperly used on one of the Projects without your permission, you may request that the content be removed under the DMCA. To make such a request, please email us at legalwikimedia.org or snail mail our designated agent at this address. Alternatively, you may make a request to our community, which often handles copyright issues faster and more effectively than prescribed under the DMCA. In that case, you can post a notice explaining your copyright concerns. For a non-exhaustive and non-authoritative list of the relevant processes for the different Project editions, look here. Before filing a DMCA claim, you also have the option of sending an email to the community at infowikimedia.org.

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