Hi All,
I am posting to this list because I could not find a way to email Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us
The following site seems to be a direct copy of Wikipedia content. http://www.infoslurp.com/information/
And it also has Google Ads. I wonder how Google is allowing this site to earn revenue from Wikipedia content.
Example page: Original Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger Infoslurp page: http://www.infoslurp.com/information/Blogger
Thanks, - Bobby Maisnam
No copyvio here. Wikipedia is downstreamed to several websites. Infolurp is only one of many sites that mirror Wikipedia's information.
Stacey Greenstein aka UtherSRG
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 04:56:01 -0500, Bobby Maisnam maisnam@utk.edu wrote:
Hi All,
I am posting to this list because I could not find a way to email Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us
The following site seems to be a direct copy of Wikipedia content. http://www.infoslurp.com/information/
And it also has Google Ads. I wonder how Google is allowing this site to earn revenue from Wikipedia content.
Example page: Original Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger Infoslurp page: http://www.infoslurp.com/information/Blogger
Thanks,
- Bobby Maisnam
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Stacey,
I just have a couple of more questions/notes:
[1] So, is it ok to display Google AdSense on the website? This would basically mean that the website is earning revenue from Wikipedia content.
[2] And the website also removes the "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" text from the page title tags and the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" text from the pages.
[3] The main website [ http://www.infoslurp.com/ ] does not have any links to the Wikipedia content [ http://www.infoslurp.com/information/ ] section. It has information about "Hair Transplants" and points the user to another website. In fact, on the main website, it does not mention anything about Wikipedia or the Wikipedia section.
The only advantage that I see is that it is providing Wikipedia content on a different website. That way it might be contributing in decreasing the bandwith load on the actual Wikipedia website. But what good is such a "mirror" (not sure if it an actual mirror) if it is hidden and the only way you can get to it is to stumble upon it accidentally?
To me, it seems to be a clear case of trying to make money out of Wikipedia content using questionable methods.
Comments are welcome.
- Bobby
----- Original Message ----- From: "Stacey Greenstein" stacey.nj@gmail.com To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 9:28 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Possible copyright violation of Wikipedia content byInfoslurp.com
No copyvio here. Wikipedia is downstreamed to several websites. Infolurp is only one of many sites that mirror Wikipedia's information.
Stacey Greenstein aka UtherSRG
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 04:56:01 -0500, Bobby Maisnam maisnam@utk.edu wrote:
Hi All,
I am posting to this list because I could not find a way to email Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contact_us
The following site seems to be a direct copy of Wikipedia content. http://www.infoslurp.com/information/
And it also has Google Ads. I wonder how Google is allowing this site to earn revenue from Wikipedia content.
Example page: Original Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger Infoslurp page: http://www.infoslurp.com/information/Blogger
Thanks,
- Bobby Maisnam
Bobby Maisnam said:
Stacey,
I just have a couple of more questions/notes:
[1] So, is it ok to display Google AdSense on the website? This would basically mean that the website is earning revenue from Wikipedia content.
My understanding of the GFDL is that it means you could even stand on a street corner and sell bound copies of its content for a fee. Someone will undoubtedly correct me if this is wrong. Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Hold on a sec, this isn't just a mirror. They're scraping Wikipedia pages in real time and serving them up with ads. It may not be a GFDL violation but they're using server resources every time someone views a page. I think web sites which have done this before were cut off from accessing Wikipedia.
Rhobite
P.S. they're also loading images directly off of upload.wikimedia.org. I think they need to be blocked.
They make people believe they are wikipedia based on what is written on their main page. In itself, it is definitly not correct.
Second, they mention no where (except weird circumvoluted comments on their disclaimer pages, which no one would understand but us) that the content is from Wikipedia. In particular, nothing is on articles. No reference to name, or link to history of the page. This is a clear violation of copyright.
On top of it, if they suck Wikipedia real time, this is real bad press for them.
Incidently, all their links to other languages and other projects are broken.
I recommand some one take his best pen and write them a gentle letter pointing out to all the relevant places. If there is a page somewhere listing mirrors under violation of our copyright, consider adding it to it.
Anthere
PS : Reading their disclaimer, I wonder if it might not be a joke...
Rhobite a écrit:
Hold on a sec, this isn't just a mirror. They're scraping Wikipedia pages in real time and serving them up with ads. It may not be a GFDL violation but they're using server resources every time someone views a page. I think web sites which have done this before were cut off from accessing Wikipedia.
Rhobite
Anthere wrote:
If there is a page somewhere listing mirrors under violation of our copyright, consider adding it to it.
There is a very (*very*) long list of known mirrors, along with GFDL-compliance status, at [[en:Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks]]. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to keep track of, because there are hundreds and hundreds of sites that use Wikipedia content---so many that that page had to be broken down into 8 subpages by name (A-C, D-F, etc.).
-Mark
Delirium a écrit:
Anthere wrote:
If there is a page somewhere listing mirrors under violation of our copyright, consider adding it to it.
There is a very (*very*) long list of known mirrors, along with GFDL-compliance status, at [[en:Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks]]. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to keep track of, because there are hundreds and hundreds of sites that use Wikipedia content---so many that that page had to be broken down into 8 subpages by name (A-C, D-F, etc.).
-Mark
You mean... we are famous ? :-)
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 20:59, Anthere wrote:
This is a clear violation of copyright.
IANAL. I am not trained in law. This is not legal advice and the info I give may be incorrect.
It is mostly a trade mark violation, with only minor copyright problems.
They don't need to mention Wikipedia anywhere. They just need to mention five authors, except if the authors don't require that (which is the case of most Wikipedia authors, i.e. anonymous users).
However, I looked at their site and I think that somebody could confuse it for the real Wikipedia. This may create trade mark confusion, especially if they have a high Google pagerank.
IANAL. I am not trained in law. This is not legal advice and the info I give may be incorrect.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
My understanding of the GFDL is that it means you could even stand on a street corner and sell bound copies of its content for a fee. Someone will undoubtedly correct me if this is wrong. Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Yep. In fact, the Free Software Foundation, which drafted the GFDL, is pretty adamant about the right to sell commercially being part of the freedom involved in capital-F Free. The only thing you're required to do is license any changes you make under the same license, and provide a "transparent" (i.e. machine-readable and human-editable) copy of the document. In fact, if some enterprising company were to look at Wikipedia, sort through the articles for 10,000 good ones, copyedit and clean those up, and then bind it in a nice set of volumes, that'd be perfectly within both the letter and the spirit of the GFDL, as long as they allowed us to reuse their copyedits and other changes in our own version.
-Mark
My understanding of the GFDL is that it means you could even stand on a street corner and sell bound copies of its content for a fee. Someone will undoubtedly correct me if this is wrong. Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
Thanks for the information. So I guess it is not a copyright issue but it does raise questions about misuse of Google Adsense and Wikipedia content.
On a hunch, I decided to do a search for a phrase from a random Wikipedia article. I searched for the phrase "new AC alternator on all Fords and the now-famous Mustang GT" on Google. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22new+AC+alternator+on+all+Fords+and+the+now... or http://tinyurl.com/67j67
I got 19 hits. Out of them, 12 display Google AdSense links. I did not realize that so many sites are using Wikipedia content to collect Google AdSense revenue.
- Bobby
p.s. Two of the sites are directly loading images off Wikipedia http://www.xasa.com/wiki/en/wikipedia/f/fo/ford_mustang.html http://www.conk.com/search/encyclopedia.cgi?q=Ford_Mustang
Bobby Maisnam a écrit:
I got 19 hits. Out of them, 12 display Google AdSense links. I did not realize that so many sites are using Wikipedia content to collect Google AdSense revenue.
- Bobby
Nod. Some suggested we could have our own official mirror with ads while Wikipedia stays free of it.
On Wednesday 09 February 2005 17:58, Bobby Maisnam wrote:
[1] So, is it ok to display Google AdSense on the website? This
Please read the GFDL.
--- Stacey Greenstein stacey.nj@gmail.com wrote:
No copyvio here. Wikipedia is downstreamed to several websites. Infolurp is only one of many sites that mirror Wikipedia's information.
Yes there is. They do not have any author information. At the very least they need a link back to the original Wikipedia article (where that info in under the history tab).
-- mav
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