[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

[Ray Saintonge]

Ting Chen wrote:
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>   
>> Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:32:14 -0700
>> Von: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>> An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
>> Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims 
>> for copyright.  If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny 
>> any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of those 
>> contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that 
>> they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for their 
>> contributors.
>>     
> The copyright policy of Baidu is a typical nothing-saying-we-own-everything-but-we-are-not-responsible-for-everything-muddy-policy.
>
> In total one can say:
> 1). Everything published on Baidu is copyrighted by Baidu. Without the approval of Baidu using any of their content would be pursued with lawsuit. (未经百度许可，任何人不得擅自（包括但不限于：以非法的方式复制、传播、展示、镜像、上载、下载）使用。否则，百度将依法追究法律责任。 This passage is from their copyright declaration).
> 2). The contributors for Baidupedia is responsible for not violating copyrights of other people. Baidu is not responsible for that. (百度百科的用户不得侵犯包括他人的著作权在内的知识产权以及其他权利。由于用户的相关帖子引起的任何知识产权纠纷，其责任在于用户本人，与百度百科无关。百度百科的用户未经著作权人的同意，对他人的作品进行全部或部分的复制，传播，拷贝，有可能侵害到他人的著作权时，不得把相关内容发布到百度百科上。These two sentences are from their user guide).
>
>   
Thanks.  That's exactly what I wanted to know.

By stating that they own everything it makes it easier for us.  If they 
are misrepresenting copyrights to the extent that their users will rely 
on this that it is a problem between them and their contributors.  We 
don't need to speculate about what might be happening there.

The second quote seems to say that they are trying to have it both 
ways.  Claiming copyright (presumably without crediting any of their 
contributors) suggests that they have some degree of control over the 
content.  Any claim that they are eligible for the defence of being an 
innocent ISP would probably not be valid.

Ec