Hi all,
I want to bring a legal concern here on Google's misuse of our content. [It came up today on Twitter](https://twitter.com/epineda/status/1564143156702199813?s=20&t=z2xu6PMB29...) that the GoogleTV app had linked a movie description text in Catalan language (which in principle it should be good news regarding language normalization). However, shortly after a wikipedian colleague realised that the text was fully taken by the Catalan Wikipedia. Once I downloaded the app by myself, I double-checked that Google does not specify anywhere (or at least that I could find minimally visible) that those lines belong to Wikipedia: neither the origin, the license, nor a link to the full article or to the CC license.
I'd like to recall the licensing footpage on Wikipedia(Text is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution...)) and its conditions, as well as to ask others to check whether there's more situations like this one. It's worth noting how wrong this is to minoritised language Wikipedias: not only the legal issue itself, but also the lack of legitimate clicks and views that we end up losing, the confusion and misunderstandings from the readers that think this is a win by Google (the example I shared, with both screenshots enclosed), and even a subsequent chicken-and-egg situation that can lead to deleted articles by some users thinking that the content was stolen from Google and not actually the opposite.
I remember that there was a previous thread here, not so long ago, about the problems of Google taking over our data and therefore diminishing clicks to the Wikimedia projects. Considering that I am fully against the GAFAM-drift that the WMF is increasingly adopting by benefiting from Google in our human, economical and digital structures, I prefer to share it here as well -and not only to the legal team of the WMF (cced).
Kind regards,
Xavier Dengra
If I understand the CC-by-sa licence correctly, Wikipedia and WMF themselves do not own the copyright, it is owned by the contributors who created the text. They can take this up with Google, the WMF cannot. If you are one of those contributors you can approach Google as misusing your copyright.
Cheers, Peter
From: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org] Sent: 29 August 2022 19:00 To: Wikimedia Mailing List; legal@wikimedia.org Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Is GoogleTV violating Wikipedia's license?
Hi all,
I want to bring a legal concern here on Google's misuse of our content. It came up today https://twitter.com/epineda/status/1564143156702199813?s=20&t=z2xu6PMB29vvkpNB79p2iQ on Twitter that the GoogleTV app had linked a movie description text in Catalan language (which in principle it should be good news regarding language normalization). However, shortly after a wikipedian colleague realised that the text was fully taken by the Catalan Wikipedia. Once I downloaded the app by myself, I double-checked that Google does not specify anywhere (or at least that I could find minimally visible) that those lines belong to Wikipedia: neither the origin, the license, nor a link to the full article or to the CC license.
I'd like to recall the licensing footpage on Wikipedia (Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License ) and its conditions, as well as to ask others to check whether there's more situations like this one. It's worth noting how wrong this is to minoritised language Wikipedias: not only the legal issue itself, but also the lack of legitimate clicks and views that we end up losing, the confusion and misunderstandings from the readers that think this is a win by Google (the example I shared, with both screenshots enclosed), and even a subsequent chicken-and-egg situation that can lead to deleted articles by some users thinking that the content was stolen from Google and not actually the opposite.
I remember that there was a previous thread here, not so long ago, about the problems of Google taking over our data and therefore diminishing clicks to the Wikimedia projects. Considering that I am fully against the GAFAM-drift that the WMF is increasingly adopting by benefiting from Google in our human, economical and digital structures, I prefer to share it here as well -and not only to the legal team of the WMF (cced).
Kind regards,
Xavier Dengra
Virus-free. http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient www.avg.com
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 10:18, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
If I understand the CC-by-sa licence correctly, Wikipedia and WMF themselves do not own the copyright, it is owned by the contributors who created the text. They can take this up with Google,
All of the above is true.
the WMF cannot
That is not true. The WMF cannot sue Google as a copyright holder. However, there is nothing stopping WM from raising the issue with Google, and gently reminding them of their obligations. Indeed, that would probably be more effective than individual editors doing so.
Agree with Andy here, the WMF cant sue as the copyright holder, but they do have leverage and direct connections to Google to remind them of their obligations as a reuser to follow the copyright licensing and at the very least acknowledge the work from a Wikipedia. You'd think this would attribution requirment be built into the Wikimedia Enterprise agreements anyway with some form of assurance or penalty for failing to acknowledge a location where in the movement a fact came from.
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 20:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 10:18, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
If I understand the CC-by-sa licence correctly, Wikipedia and WMF
themselves do not
own the copyright, it is owned by the contributors who created the text.
They can take
this up with Google,
All of the above is true.
the WMF cannot
That is not true. The WMF cannot sue Google as a copyright holder. However, there is nothing stopping WM from raising the issue with Google, and gently reminding them of their obligations. Indeed, that would probably be more effective than individual editors doing so.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing https://pigsonthewing.org.uk _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
yep. Asking nicely is always the best first option, and WMF is good at that. Reusing our stuff is excellent, but correct licensing is important, and a link back would be very nice.
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 13:50, Gnangarra gnangarra@gmail.com wrote:
Agree with Andy here, the WMF cant sue as the copyright holder, but they do have leverage and direct connections to Google to remind them of their obligations as a reuser to follow the copyright licensing and at the very least acknowledge the work from a Wikipedia. You'd think this would attribution requirment be built into the Wikimedia Enterprise agreements anyway with some form of assurance or penalty for failing to acknowledge a location where in the movement a fact came from.
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 20:40, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 10:18, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
If I understand the CC-by-sa licence correctly, Wikipedia and WMF
themselves do not
own the copyright, it is owned by the contributors who created the
text. They can take
this up with Google,
All of the above is true.
the WMF cannot
That is not true. The WMF cannot sue Google as a copyright holder. However, there is nothing stopping WM from raising the issue with Google, and gently reminding them of their obligations. Indeed, that would probably be more effective than individual editors doing so.
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing https://pigsonthewing.org.uk _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
-- Boodarwun Gnangarra 'ngany dabakarn koorliny arn boodjera dardoon ngalang Nyungar koortaboodjar'
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Agree that they could shake the tree a bit. I hope you will encourage them to do that if you make it to the board. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Andy Mabbett [mailto:andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk] Sent: 30 August 2022 14:39 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Cc: F. Xavier Dengra i Grau Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Is GoogleTV violating Wikipedia's license?
On Tue, 30 Aug 2022 at 10:18, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
If I understand the CC-by-sa licence correctly, Wikipedia and WMF
themselves do not
own the copyright, it is owned by the contributors who created the text.
They can take
this up with Google,
All of the above is true.
the WMF cannot
That is not true. The WMF cannot sue Google as a copyright holder. However, there is nothing stopping WM from raising the issue with Google, and gently reminding them of their obligations. Indeed, that would probably be more effective than individual editors doing so.
We had a similar problem with the Dutch KPN interactive tv six years ago, and as members of the Dutch WP community contacted the tv provider KPN, who referred us to Metrological https://www.metrological.com/ for the issue. Metrological has been very responsive and with the next update of the tv app the copyright claim was replaced by a cc-by-sa notice for all three tv providers (KPN, Telfort and XS4All) they served. As I mentioned, this was in 2016, and I have no idea how the situation is nowadays, but back then just sending an email and reaching out about the wrong copyright claim worked for us.
Best, Ciell
Op di 30 aug. 2022 om 00:41 schreef F. Xavier Dengra i Grau via Wikimedia-l wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org:
Hi all,
I want to bring a legal concern here on Google's misuse of our content. It came up today on Twitter https://twitter.com/epineda/status/1564143156702199813?s=20&t=z2xu6PMB29vvkpNB79p2iQ that the GoogleTV app had linked a movie description text in Catalan language (which in principle it should be good news regarding language normalization). However, shortly after a wikipedian colleague realised that the text was fully taken by the Catalan Wikipedia. Once I downloaded the app by myself, I double-checked that Google does not specify anywhere (or at least that I could find minimally visible) that those lines belong to Wikipedia: neither the origin, the license, nor a link to the full article or to the CC license.
I'd like to recall the licensing footpage on Wikipedia (*Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License*) and its conditions, as well as to ask others to check whether there's more situations like this one. It's worth noting how wrong this is to minoritised language Wikipedias: not only the legal issue itself, but also the lack of legitimate clicks and views that we end up losing, the confusion and misunderstandings from the readers that think this is a win by Google (the example I shared, with both screenshots enclosed), and even a subsequent chicken-and-egg situation that can lead to deleted articles by some users thinking that the content was stolen from Google and not actually the opposite.
I remember that there was a previous thread here, not so long ago, about the problems of Google taking over our data and therefore diminishing clicks to the Wikimedia projects. Considering that I am fully against the GAFAM-drift that the WMF is increasingly adopting by benefiting from Google in our human, economical and digital structures, I prefer to share it here as well -and not only to the legal team of the WMF (cced).
Kind regards,
Xavier Dengra
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
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