Editing Wiki (section)

== Legal environment ==

Joint authorship of articles, in which different users participate in correcting, editing, and compiling the finished product, can also cause editors to become [[tenants in common]] of the copyright, making it impossible to republish without permission of all co-owners, some of whose identities may be unknown due to pseudonymous or anonymous editing.<ref name=Legal/> Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an [[open content]] license. Version 2 of the [[GNU Free Documentation License]] includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing, and [[Creative Commons]] licenses are also popular. When no license is specified, an implied license to read and add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki.

Wikis and their users can be held liable for certain activities that occur on the wiki. If a wiki owner displays indifference and forgoes controls (such as banning copyright infringers) that they could have exercised to stop copyright infringement, they may be deemed to have authorized infringement, especially if the wiki is primarily used to infringe copyrights or obtains a direct financial benefit, such as advertising revenue, from infringing activities.<ref name=Legal/> In the United States, wikis may benefit from [[Section 230|Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act]], which protects sites that engage in "[[Good Samaritan]]" policing of harmful material, with no requirement on the quality or quantity of such self-policing.<ref>{{cite web | title = Self-Regulation: How Wikipedia Leverages User-Generated Quality Control Under Section 230 | first1 = Kathleen M. | last1 = Walsh | first2 = Sarah | last2 = Oh | date = February 23, 2010 | url = https://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=sarah_oh | url-status=dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140106040705/https://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=sarah_oh | archive-date = January 6, 2014 | df = mdy-all }}</ref> It has also been argued that a wiki's enforcement of certain rules, such as anti-bias, verifiability, reliable sourcing, and no-original-research policies, could pose legal risks.<ref>{{Citation|last = Myers | first = Ken S.|title=Wikimmunity: Fitting the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia |ssrn-access=free |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916529 |journal=Harvard Journal of Law and Technology|publisher=The Berkman Center for Internet and Society|year=2008|ssrn=916529|volume=20|page=163 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240124221800/https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=256097088074025084113093077025016081116048056043070018004102098070073113118090069100062035127024024056008082071071025106120037047073003040121094126086064082109026009057126000010065095025066118082112066000081066084026080001028089015088099022125003&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE |archive-date= Jan 24, 2024 }}</ref> When [[defamation]] occurs on a wiki, theoretically, all users of the wiki can be held liable, because any of them had the ability to remove or amend the defamatory material from the "publication". It remains to be seen whether wikis will be regarded as more akin to an [[internet service provider]], which is generally not held liable due to its lack of control over publications' contents, than a publisher.<ref name=Legal/> It has been recommended that trademark owners monitor what information is presented about their trademarks on wikis, since courts may use such content as evidence pertaining to public perceptions, and they can edit entries to rectify misinformation.<ref>{{citation|journal=Managing Intellectual Property|volume=179|last=Jarvis|first=Joshua|title=Police your marks in a wiki world|url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/manintpr179&div=31&id=&page=|pages=101–103|date=May 2008|issue=179|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044437/https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals%2Fmanintpr179&div=31&id=&page=|archive-date=March 4, 2016}}</ref>