Attribution would be a step in the right direction, but are Baidu Baike still claiming copyright over material on their site? I'm afraid I don't read Chinese, but a usually reliable source says they do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baidu_Baike#Copyright
Lots of people mirror or otherwise use content from Wikipedia, and that's fine provided they comply with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-... and that includes having a compatible copyright.
Even if Baidu Baike attributes content correctly, it isn't acceptable for them to claim ownership of content copied, translated or otherwise derived from Wikipedia. They could of course change the copyright status of pages that incorporate content from Wikipedia to CC by SA 3, but if their site is anything like ours having incompatible copyright on different pages would be messy. It would be much better for them to change the copyright on their site to CC by SA 3.
WSC
Message: 2 Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:16:47 +0900 From: RYU Cheol rcheol@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidu Baike & Wikipedia ????????? (??) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: BANLkTi=mLWG-8rMR67Ff1FdbosLLtuS1Bg@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
RIght, WMF is not the copyright holder of articles as Free Software Foundation is not of GPLed source codes.
Though WMF could give legal help for a Wikipedian to file a law suit or WMF could be an agent for the Wikipedian, WMF need to approach Baidu to discuss about attribution. I don't think Baidu has so much difficulties to do it.
Cheol
2011/4/19 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
2011/4/19 Dana Lutenegger dana.lutenegger@gmail.com:
Actually, I'm pretty sure that on paper, Chinese law forbids this kind of copying without attribution. The issue is whether or not it can be
enforced
in practice. If it was strictly enforced, a lot of Baidu Baike and Hudong Wiki would have to be seriously retooled, so I doubt it. However, there
have
been recent cases in which copyright infringement claims have been upheld
by
Chinese courts, such as the infamous "Starbuck" coffee chain in Shanghai.
I
think that our legal counsel should at least be in touch with Baidu on
this,
and perhaps try to get them to take down the material, attribute it properly, or agree to the donation or apology letter ideas.
The Starbuck case would be trademark infringement, not copyright, so isn't a particularly useful precedent. I believe China has similar copyright laws to the rest of the world, though (our article says they have signed several international agreements on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_the_People%27s_Republi... ).
Keep in mind, the WMF isn't the copyright holder, so there is a limit to what the WMF's legal counsel can do. He could have a quiet word, though, which could help.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l