[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

[Robert Stojnic]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:

>On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge.
>>Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so
>>people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the
>>the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other
>>parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content
>>and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
>>    
>>
>
>their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our
>license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in
>compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to
>say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright
>infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other
>  
>

I couldn't agree more with Henning comment above! This is why 99% of 
people are into the project, I believe.

Dan, your comment about infringement as theft is relevant only for 
western societies. AFAIK, in China, there is a booming internet market, 
that is both aggressive and in search for its own identity and market 
share. Copyright is seen as one of those bad western thingies, that west 
nicely uses to drain China even more (lets not forget - the reason why 
you can buy stuff so cheaply in US is that some Chinese guy is working 
his butt off). So, it is controversial who steals what and from whom. My 
personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage 
to steal from us. I personally think we should respect the specificities 
of the Chinese situation, and help create free knowledge and build 
cooperation, instead of trying to enforce western laws.

Robert