Wikimedia Foundation Legal department

Legal

The Legal Department oversees all legal matters for the Foundation and focuses 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 community development, disinformation, domestic and international contracts, employment law, ethics, fundraising and grant law, human rights, international law, internet law, litigation, non-profit corporate governance, policy drafting, privacy law, public policy, trademark and copyright law and trust and safety.

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.

Leadership

Stephen LaPorte

General Counsel

Aeryn Palmer

Deputy General Counsel

Jacob Rogers

Associate General Counsel

James Buatti

Legal Director

Jan Eissfeldt

Director, Global Head of Trust & Safety

Jan Gerlach

Public Policy Director

Maggie Dennis

Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability

Rebecca MacKinnon

Vice President, Global Advocacy

Legal Affairs

Through our three subteams, we safeguard our brand, support fundraising, manage contracts, uphold legal compliance, and support community initiatives.

The team

Aeryn Palmer

Deputy General Counsel

Jacob Rogers

Associate General Counsel

James Buatti

Legal Director

Chuck Roslof

Lead Counsel, support for Board of Trustees

More about Legal Affairs

Community Resilience and Sustainability

Community Resilience and Sustainability is a wing of the Legal department, led by the Vice President of Community Resilience & Sustainability Maggie Dennis. We consist of Committee Support, Human Rights and Trust and Safety.

The team

Maggie Dennis

Vice President

Jan Eissfeldt

Director, Global Head of Trust & Safety

Kaarel Vaidla

Lead Movement Process Architect

Abhas Tripathi

Manager, Trust & Safety (Disinformation)

Committee Support

The Committee Support team fosters collaboration between movement groups and supporting organizations to achieve shared goals. The objectives of the team are to ensure volunteers who support the Wikimedia movement through these groups can experience healthy engagements, function effectively, and maintain confidence in their ability to receive and provide necessary support.

Human Rights

This team works towards mitigating risks and threats to individual contributors and groups supporting our knowledge resources.

Trust & Safety

Trust and Safety (T&S) identifies, builds and – as appropriate – staffs processes which keep our users safe.

More about Community Resilience and Sustainability

Global Advocacy

The Global Advocacy team protects the community-governed model by taking action on policies related to access to knowledge and free expression. It protects the people in in the Wikimedia community by advocating for privacy rights and against mass surveillance. And finally, it protects the values of the movement by prioritizing human rights and countering disinformation.

The team

Rebecca MacKinnon

Vice President of Global Advocacy

Jan Gerlach

Public Policy Director

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia

Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead

Amalia Toledo

Lead Public Policy Specialist (Latin America and the Caribbean)

Franziska ("Ziski") Putz

Senior Movement Advocacy Manager

Miguelángel ("Miguel") Verde Garrido

Senior Editor

Stan Adams

Lead Public Policy Specialist (North America)

Rachel Judhistari

Lead Public Policy Specialist (Asia)

More about Global Advocacy

Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") Compliance

In addition to the DMCA Policy, please refer to § 8 of the Wikimedia Terms of Use, which states:

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 legal

wikimedia.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 info

wikimedia.org.

Registered Legal Agent

Wikimedia Foundation

c/o CT Corporation System

330 N Brand Blvd.

Glendale, CA 91203-2336