Hello,
I've just discovered that a website called called "Malaspina Great Books" has "adapted" hundreds of our biographical articles and included them in their database. They claim copyright of this database ("This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books 1995-2003") and make no mention of having released any of it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Clearly they are infringing the terms of the licence. What should we do about this?
The Malaspina website is at:
See also [[Talk:Galileo Galilei]], which is where I first noted the fact.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
BURN THEM! I think RMS would have some interesting input, I am forwarding the message to him and the FSF.
-- Michael Becker
-----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Oliver Pereira Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 6.57 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] GNU FDL infringement alert!
Hello,
I've just discovered that a website called called "Malaspina Great Books" has "adapted" hundreds of our biographical articles and included them in their database. They claim copyright of this database ("This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books 1995-2003") and make no mention of having released any of it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Clearly they are infringing the terms of the licence. What should we do about this?
The Malaspina website is at:
See also [[Talk:Galileo Galilei]], which is where I first noted the fact.
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
root wrote:
BURN THEM! I think RMS would have some interesting input, I am forwarding the message to him and the FSF.
Maybe before "calling the authorities" someone should just send them a nice but explicit mail and ask them to mention the GFDL below the text.
Please don't forget that we *want* our articles to spread. It's a rudeness that they call it "adapted" and don't point out the licence of the articles. But often one or two strict mails can help.
Kurt
On 7/8/03 11:38 AM, "Kurt Jansson" jansson@gmx.net wrote:
root wrote:
BURN THEM! I think RMS would have some interesting input, I am forwarding the message to him and the FSF.
Maybe before "calling the authorities" someone should just send them a nice but explicit mail and ask them to mention the GFDL below the text.
Please don't forget that we *want* our articles to spread. It's a rudeness that they call it "adapted" and don't point out the licence of the articles. But often one or two strict mails can help.
Yes. We certainly welcome Russ McNeil to release Malaspina Great Books under the GFDL. But McNeil certainly needs to do so if he wishes to use Wikipedia content.
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Oliver Pereira wrote:
They claim copyright of this database ("This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books 1995-2003")
Oh. The actual copyright symbol didn't transfer when I copied and pasted the text. Just imagine that there is one before the year in the above sentence...
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Oliver Pereira wrote:
I've just discovered that a website called called "Malaspina Great Books" has "adapted" hundreds of our biographical articles and included them in their database. They claim copyright of this database ("This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books 1995-2003") and make no mention of having released any of it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. Clearly they are infringing the terms of the licence. What should we do about this?
The bios link to Wikipedia at their ends, so I'd assume that they're acting in good faith. We just need to point out to them that they need to include a notice by each bio indicating that it's released under the GFDL. (They don't have to release their entire database, but we could encourage them to do that as well, giving their use of our biographies as immediate evidence of the benefits of free content.)
The Malaspina website is at: http://www.malaspina.com/
I found an interesting June 2 post in their guestbook http://www.iguest.net/cgi-bin/gb.cgi?user=greatbooks, where a visitor pointed out an error in Martin Heidegger's bio. Like usual, that error remains uncorrected on Malaspina -- but of course it had been corrected on Wikipedia months before! I posted a reply (from me, not from Wikipedia generally); I also sent it to the email address given by the visitor.
See also [[Talk:Galileo Galilei]], which is where I first noted the fact.
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
The bios link to Wikipedia at their ends, so I'd assume that they're acting in good faith.
Yes, I would imagine that's right. Do we have a specific volunteer to write to them? Better than, than a half-dozen confusing emails. :-)
I would advocate a friendly letter that assumes they will want to do the right thing. The linkback is good evidence to that effect, and getting the details of the GNU FDL right is a bit complicated. :-)
--Jimbo
On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yes, I would imagine that's right. Do we have a specific volunteer to write to them? Better than, than a half-dozen confusing emails. :-)
I've just e-mailed Dr. McNeil (using the contact address given on the homepage), actually. But I wasn't *entirely* sure about what he had to do to comply with the GFDL, so I might have sounded a bit incoherent. So, just the one confusing e-mail, then. ;) It would probably be best if someone more articulate and knowledgeable about the law e-mailed him as well...
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+