I'm sorry, but "missing manual"? We have excellent help pages that will guide a newbie through everything from just starting to writing featured articles to resolving the most entrenched disputes. [[Help:Tutorial]] is an excellent place to start.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596515164/

Depending on their sales curve, opening it up at some point could well give them a nice sales boost.

On 21/10/2007, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: No idea. But they don't need permission; they are under no legal or moral or ethical obligation to ask for it;

On 10/21/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Wow, I'm rather surprised by that. Ohwell.

On 10/21/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote: If it were free content it'd help Wikipedia even more, though.

On 10/21/07, Robert Rohde <rarohde(a)gmail.com> wrote: invests it. Of course it isn't. Whose perceptions do you think say it is?

Talk is tantamount to robbery? Give me a break.

Well, I said they should be forced to make their work free content only if it can be done legally, which would make it quite distinct from robbery, which is illegal. I find it interesting though that'd you'd equate enforcement of trademark law to robbery.

I ask everyone foolishly responding to this thread to let it die under the weight of its own silliness.

On 10/21/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: I think I've been incredibly careful during this discussion in distinguishing between the two. In my opinion it's always right to force someone to release their work under a free license. Only some of the time it's legal, though.

Do people honestly think that you have to get permission from the subject of a book before you write about it?

It strikes me that we have made our project by writing an encyclopedia; we write about anything and everything - people, organisations, products - without ever asking permission to do so or to use their name, and indeed we aggressively make a lot of noise about our right to do this.

Firefox became too concerned with their name and it's usage, and people stopped using it (Debian) - who does that help?

(IANAL) I shall refer you to our own article [[Trademark]] which provides a link to "Fair Use of Trademarks" (http://www.publaw.com/fairusetrade.html) . The work is not contributing to the dilution of the trademark, it is not disparaging, it does not turn the trademark into a noun or verb or plural form, the trademark stand out as such. It otherwise fulfill requirement for "nominative use" of another's trademark, including the work "does nothing that would, in conjunction with the trademark, suggest to the reader sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner". I'm also pretty sure that there would be disclaimer about who own the Wikipedia trademark inside the book, not endorsement etc. Only because you're familiar with the web page title of a Wikipedia's article. If you look at the article book, no reasonable person would be confuse by it being an article rather than a book that describe Wikipedia (or eBay or ...). We're also not talking just the title of a Wikipedia's article. We use the name in the title, we use it multiple time within the article, we (at least a sizeable portion) fight for the fair use of their logo and what not in the article in describing them. It's not any different here. In our article, we talk about a company, a company product etc. Here, the book talk about how someone would go about editing Wikipedia. Just because you might not agree with someone writing a book that's not free content doesn't mean we can have different interpretation of fair use applying to our use of someone else's IP and someone else use of our project IP. - We're talking about another use of one's trademark, it's not as far apart in concept as you might otherwise suggest. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 21/10/2007, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: No idea. But they don't need permission; they are under no legal or moral or ethical obligation to ask for it;

So, this time next year, we'll have to deal with hordes of people who joined the project because of the book quoting it as policy in discussions when the relevant policy has been updated. Boy, I'm cynical.

On 10/21/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: That's why I think that one of the qualifications for posting such messages should be the ability to convert oxygen into CO2.

Now, you're saying you don't think that's possible, that trademark law doesn't apply here. And the fact that there's a "Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual" without any TM or (R)'s on it suggests that maybe you're right. Although, with Wikipedia it's still kind of different (more confusing), because Wikipedia is the title of a series of written works.