Hi,
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia. http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%... You may click the link above to see how many they are. (We put "Featured articles", "Good articles", "DYK and other general articles" in groups.) Baidupedia users not only copied from zh.wp, but also from ja.wp and en.wp. I think we could now do the evidence collection works first, and I hope the list could be useful if one day the WMF takes some action to Baidu.
Regards, Titan
Just a weird question maybe, but has it been tried to just write them a letter and ask to remove the content? Please note that WMF is nto the author of the content, and does not own the content. individual authors such as yourself could of course. Therefore i doubt she could enforce the GFDL requirements. Or are you suggestion rather press/pr action?
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/6/11 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
Hi,
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia. http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%... You may click the link above to see how many they are. (We put "Featured articles", "Good articles", "DYK and other general articles" in groups.) Baidupedia users not only copied from zh.wp, but also from ja.wp and en.wp. I think we could now do the evidence collection works first, and I hope the list could be useful if one day the WMF takes some action to Baidu.
Regards, Titan -- Support the Wikimedia Foundation: http://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Baidupedia is an issue since it came to live. We have tried many times to contact them for this issue.
It is not an issue of the individuals, but indeed a foundation issue, because Baidupedia is in a very big scope copyviolating and they don't care, and not only zh-wp is a victim of them.
yours Ting Chen
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:41:00 +0200 Von: "effe iets anders" effeietsanders@gmail.com An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
Just a weird question maybe, but has it been tried to just write them a letter and ask to remove the content? Please note that WMF is nto the author of the content, and does not own the content. individual authors such as yourself could of course. Therefore i doubt she could enforce the GFDL requirements. Or are you suggestion rather press/pr action?
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/6/11 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
Hi,
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%...
You may click the link above to see how many they are. (We put "Featured articles", "Good articles", "DYK and other general articles" in groups.) Baidupedia users not only copied from zh.wp, but also from ja.wp and
en.wp.
I think we could now do the evidence collection works first, and I hope
the
list could be useful if one day the WMF takes some action to Baidu.
Regards, Titan -- Support the Wikimedia Foundation: http://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/6/11 Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de:
Baidupedia is an issue since it came to live. We have tried many times to contact them for this issue.
It is not an issue of the individuals, but indeed a foundation issue, because Baidupedia is in a very big scope copyviolating and they don't care, and not only zh-wp is a victim of them.
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
Andre Engels wrote:
2008/6/11 Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de:
Baidupedia is an issue since it came to live. We have tried many times to contact them for this issue.
It is not an issue of the individuals, but indeed a foundation issue, because Baidupedia is in a very big scope copyviolating and they don't care, and not only zh-wp is a victim of them.
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
Indeed. That is one of the big failings of our current licensing scheme. Any one individual's contributions may not be worth the bother of a copyright infringement suit, which is always more difficult for the plaintiff since he has the burden of proof. When articles have multiple authors the defendant can probably pick the claim apart by pointing out that particular sentences were written by persons other than the plaintiff.
Having the licence include an appointment of WMF as a non-exclusive agent for the purpose of prosecuting violations could give WMF standing to go after the most egregious violators.
Ec
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:
2008/6/11 Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de:
Baidupedia is an issue since it came to live. We have tried many times to contact them for this issue.
It is not an issue of the individuals, but indeed a foundation issue, because Baidupedia is in a very big scope copyviolating and they don't care, and not only zh-wp is a victim of them.
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
Indeed. That is one of the big failings of our current licensing scheme. Any one individual's contributions may not be worth the bother of a copyright infringement suit, which is always more difficult for the plaintiff since he has the burden of proof. When articles have multiple authors the defendant can probably pick the claim apart by pointing out that particular sentences were written by persons other than the plaintiff.
Having the licence include an appointment of WMF as a non-exclusive agent for the purpose of prosecuting violations could give WMF standing to go after the most egregious violators.
I think that I understand what Ting wants to say: It is copyvio of the scale which threats to the whole project. Because of that WMF should find some way how to act. Not in the sense of authorship, but in the sense of protecting the project. I don't know how, maybe Mike has some answer :)
2008/6/11 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
I think that I understand what Ting wants to say: It is copyvio of the scale which threats to the whole project. Because of that WMF should find some way how to act. Not in the sense of authorship, but in the sense of protecting the project. I don't know how, maybe Mike has some answer :)
Worse than that. As long as china continues to block zh.wikipedia we are not even in a position to compete.
geni wrote:
2008/6/11 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
I think that I understand what Ting wants to say: It is copyvio of the scale which threats to the whole project. Because of that WMF should find some way how to act. Not in the sense of authorship, but in the sense of protecting the project. I don't know how, maybe Mike has some answer :)
Worse than that. As long as china continues to block zh.wikipedia we are not even in a position to compete.
IIRC, Baidu does have a US Corporation, and that would strengthen the jurisdiction of the US courts. We really need to take a more imaginative approach to this problem.
Ec
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
This is not that easy. If I contribute for the GNU projects and a company comes and takes the part of code I contributed, builds it in its own software and claim it to be its own property. It is my right that is breached, yes. But the FSF would take the intrest of the project and sue the company.
In this case it is not just a hobby website take our content for his small website. It is a company who purposefully take large quantity of contents from our projects and claim it to be theirs. The quantity of authors that is in this case breached is enomous. It is the duty of the foundation to protect the interest of our community.
Baidu is also sued by the music industry in America because of mp3 issues.
In this case an individual do not have the resource to make the lawsuite, and for an individual from China or Taiwan, whose right is breached, it is almost impossible. If the foundation don't care this matter, it is a shame.
Yours Ting Chen
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:12 PM, Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de wrote:
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
This is not that easy. If I contribute for the GNU projects and a company comes and takes the part of code I contributed, builds it in its own software and claim it to be its own property. It is my right that is breached, yes. But the FSF would take the intrest of the project and sue the company.
IANAL, but how exactly can they sue them if they don't own the copyright (resp. patent rights or whatever) to the software? Are you suggesting that the WMF takes 'mandates' from individual WM contributors to sue on behalf of them? This would probably mean that a fund/endowment for 'the legal defense of the moral rights of Wikimedia contributors" would need to be created...
Michael
Michael Bimmler wrote:
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 8:12 PM, Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de wrote:
It is an issue of the individuals, because they are the ones whose rights have been breached.
This is not that easy. If I contribute for the GNU projects and a company comes and takes the part of code I contributed, builds it in its own software and claim it to be its own property. It is my right that is breached, yes. But the FSF would take the intrest of the project and sue the company.
IANAL, but how exactly can they sue them if they don't own the copyright (resp. patent rights or whatever) to the software? Are you suggesting that the WMF takes 'mandates' from individual WM contributors to sue on behalf of them? This would probably mean that a fund/endowment for 'the legal defense of the moral rights of Wikimedia contributors" would need to be created...
"Agent" or "mandate" would come to roughly the same thing. I'm not a big supporter of the idea of legal defence funds. Ironically, I believe that defending our view could be done more cheaply without it. Donors are likely to be more generous with a Foundation that has the guts to exercise its rights when it doesn't have the money in the bank for it.
The moral rights argument would likely be very weak in the United States. While US copyright law does pay lip service to moral rights it does not penalize violations of moral rights. We might do better with questions around who protects the rights of the public, or breach of contract -- perhaps even in a class action suit. A lot of this is untrodden ground, so it's difficult to say where our most effective argument would lie. A little imagination would help.
Ec
2008/6/11 Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com:
IANAL, but how exactly can they sue them if they don't own the copyright (resp. patent rights or whatever) to the software? Are you suggesting that the WMF takes 'mandates' from individual WM contributors to sue on behalf of them?
It's something I have thought about more than once - making some kind of contract between me and the WMF, granting them rights to replublish the material I created for the various projects, and authorizing them to take action against copyright infringement on them on my behalf.
One could make an argument that the Foundation has a compilation copyright on the contents of the encyclopedias, if one wanted to launch some legal efforts based on the existing content before we get a more explicit authorized-agent license in the legalese associated with making a contribution.
Someone might fight back on that point, and might conceivably win, but we'd probably make it to trial on that point. Which is probably far enough.
-george
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2008/6/11 Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com:
IANAL, but how exactly can they sue them if they don't own the copyright (resp. patent rights or whatever) to the software? Are you suggesting that the WMF takes 'mandates' from individual WM contributors to sue on behalf of them?
It's something I have thought about more than once - making some kind of contract between me and the WMF, granting them rights to replublish the material I created for the various projects, and authorizing them to take action against copyright infringement on them on my behalf.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Ting Chen wrote:
In this case it is not just a hobby website take our content for his small website. It is a company who purposefully take large quantity of contents from our projects and claim it to be theirs. The quantity of authors that is in this case breached is enomous. It is the duty of the foundation to protect the interest of our community.
Baidu is also sued by the music industry in America because of mp3 issues.
That would be a strange ally!
In this case an individual do not have the resource to make the lawsuite, and for an individual from China or Taiwan, whose right is breached, it is almost impossible. If the foundation don't care this matter, it is a shame.
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Ec
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Ting Chen wrote:
In this case it is not just a hobby website take our content for his
small website. It is a company who purposefully take large quantity of contents from our projects and claim it to be theirs. The quantity of authors that is in this case breached is enomous. It is the duty of the foundation to protect the interest of our community.
Baidu is also sued by the music industry in America because of mp3
issues.
That would be a strange ally!
<snip>
Actually the music industry lost their first suit against Baidu, despite their claims that Baidu facillitates something like 40% of all music piracy in China.
-Robert Rohde
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Ec
Financially, I have been led to believe the WMF does not really have the
resources available to be spending on prosecuting intellectual property violations other than what we can do by hoping people abide by C+D letters. Which is a shame too, because I would very much like to see the foundation more litigious in its defense of our licenses by pursuing sites that use our contributors works without attribution, (as well as other violations of our IPs).
To some degree this is silly ... we enable mirrors and encourage them, if they are legit and do the right thing under GFDL.
Perhaps honey is a better approach than vinegar.
"We are glad to see that you're mirroring our contributors' content, but we're confused about why you haven't put in the history and credits info as the GFDL license requires. How can we work with you to try and get your site properly compliant and set up as a proper Wikipedia mirror? Thanks!"
On the other hand, bad faith or extended refusal to cooperate or respond would shift to a more antagonistic model...
-george william herbert
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Ec
Financially, I have been led to believe the WMF does not really have the
resources available to be spending on prosecuting intellectual property violations other than what we can do by hoping people abide by C+D letters. Which is a shame too, because I would very much like to see the foundation more litigious in its defense of our licenses by pursuing sites that use our contributors works without attribution, (as well as other violations of our IPs).
-- Dan Rosenthal _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The thing is, Baidu does not host a Wikipedia mirror, per se. They host their own Wiki encyclopedia, but many articles are taken directly from WP with no credit given.
Mark
2008/6/11 George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
To some degree this is silly ... we enable mirrors and encourage them, if they are legit and do the right thing under GFDL.
Perhaps honey is a better approach than vinegar.
"We are glad to see that you're mirroring our contributors' content, but we're confused about why you haven't put in the history and credits info as the GFDL license requires. How can we work with you to try and get your site properly compliant and set up as a proper Wikipedia mirror? Thanks!"
On the other hand, bad faith or extended refusal to cooperate or respond would shift to a more antagonistic model...
-george william herbert
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Ec
Financially, I have been led to believe the WMF does not really have the
resources available to be spending on prosecuting intellectual property violations other than what we can do by hoping people abide by C+D letters. Which is a shame too, because I would very much like to see the foundation more litigious in its defense of our licenses by pursuing sites that use our contributors works without attribution, (as well as other violations of our IPs).
-- Dan Rosenthal _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Financially, I have been led to believe the WMF does not really have the
resources available to be spending on prosecuting intellectual property violations other than what we can do by hoping people abide by C+D letters. Which is a shame too, because I would very much like to see the foundation more litigious in its defense of our licenses by pursuing sites that use our contributors works without attribution, (as well as other violations of our IPs).
Sometimes, a lack of finances can be an easy excuse. Like anything else if it's otherwise a good idea, it needs to be given room in the budget. Michael Bimmler's allusion to moral rights made me wonder whether a case could be brought in another country that has strong moral rights legislation. We wouldn't be looking for money, though it would be nice to recover the costs of the suit. We want proper attribution.
The right of attribution is essential to maintaining the viral character of copyleft. Copyrights need to be vigorously defended, or they risk being treated as abandoned. If we tacitly consent to Baidu's improper use of our material it puts into doubt the use of the same material further downstream. There would be a presumption that they have a copyright on what they publish, and that would put a chill on anyone wanting to use their material. Commercial publishers may very well ask and easily receive permission to use "their" material. Acknowledging in public that it is used with Baidu's permission would then strengthen the fiction that there is a real copyright.
Ec
IMHO, if they do not give proper attribution and do not respond (which doesn't surprise me as I said earlier) and we do not have the resources to do a lawsuit. There is only one way out. Make a stink about it and make them loose face. In my experience here in Thailand this is a last resort option here in this part of Asia. But most people here in this region are more terrified to loose their face than anything else. If they feel that they will loose face over an issue they will most probably come and talk to get things straightened out. If not and we make them loose face though, they will surely never talk to us again!
Like I said it would be a last resort and I have used this option myself a couple of times with amazing results.
Waerth
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
I have long felt that the difficulties when our collective copyrights are breached would be greater than any problem we would face in trying to abide by the rights of others. We have any number of layers to protect us from legal liabilities from copyvios, but there is very little effort to deal with being on the other side of the dispute. This is definitely a point that I would raise before the Board if elected.
Financially, I have been led to believe the WMF does not really have the
resources available to be spending on prosecuting intellectual property violations other than what we can do by hoping people abide by C+D letters. Which is a shame too, because I would very much like to see the foundation more litigious in its defense of our licenses by pursuing sites that use our contributors works without attribution, (as well as other violations of our IPs).
Sometimes, a lack of finances can be an easy excuse. Like anything else if it's otherwise a good idea, it needs to be given room in the budget. Michael Bimmler's allusion to moral rights made me wonder whether a case could be brought in another country that has strong moral rights legislation. We wouldn't be looking for money, though it would be nice to recover the costs of the suit. We want proper attribution.
The right of attribution is essential to maintaining the viral character of copyleft. Copyrights need to be vigorously defended, or they risk being treated as abandoned. If we tacitly consent to Baidu's improper use of our material it puts into doubt the use of the same material further downstream. There would be a presumption that they have a copyright on what they publish, and that would put a chill on anyone wanting to use their material. Commercial publishers may very well ask and easily receive permission to use "their" material. Acknowledging in public that it is used with Baidu's permission would then strengthen the fiction that there is a real copyright.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Waerth wrote:
IMHO, if they do not give proper attribution and do not respond (which doesn't surprise me as I said earlier) and we do not have the resources to do a lawsuit. There is only one way out. Make a stink about it and make them loose face. In my experience here in Thailand this is a last resort option here in this part of Asia. But most people here in this region are more terrified to loose their face than anything else. If they feel that they will loose face over an issue they will most probably come and talk to get things straightened out. If not and we make them loose face though, they will surely never talk to us again!
Like I said it would be a last resort and I have used this option myself a couple of times with amazing results.
Something of the sort had crossed my mind; thanks for raising the point.
Ec
2008/6/12 Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th:
IMHO, if they do not give proper attribution and do not respond (which doesn't surprise me as I said earlier) and we do not have the resources to do a lawsuit. There is only one way out. Make a stink about it and make them loose face. In my experience here in Thailand this is a last resort option here in this part of Asia. But most people here in this region are more terrified to loose their face than anything else. If they feel that they will loose face over an issue they will most probably come and talk to get things straightened out. If not and we make them loose face though, they will surely never talk to us again! Like I said it would be a last resort and I have used this option myself a couple of times with amazing results.
IIRC Florence tried this at Wikimania 2007 and it didn't do anything.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2008/6/12 Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th:
IMHO, if they do not give proper attribution and do not respond (which doesn't surprise me as I said earlier) and we do not have the resources to do a lawsuit. There is only one way out. Make a stink about it and make them loose face. In my experience here in Thailand this is a last resort option here in this part of Asia. But most people here in this region are more terrified to loose their face than anything else. If they feel that they will loose face over an issue they will most probably come and talk to get things straightened out. If not and we make them loose face though, they will surely never talk to us again! Like I said it would be a last resort and I have used this option myself a couple of times with amazing results.
IIRC Florence tried this at Wikimania 2007 and it didn't do anything.
Then they weren't impressed enough with the face loosing potential. It isn't an easy thing. It must be done in such a way that you are the honorable party (and no not western honor, Asian/Chinese honor). And it must make you look smart and subtle (so absolutely not a lot of talking and compromising). And it must offer them a way out in which they can gain face to the public at large. So that even though they take a step back, publicly it will appear that they have gained. Very common thing in politics here. And what also helps is if you can offer them a scapegoat on whom to put all of the blame.
It is something that needs some thinking through. It must offer all what I said above. But you must also understand that if they call your bluff you will have to play it hardball. If you back away then, you will never be taken seriously in at least China (and probably most of East Asia) anymore. If you play hardball they will most surely never ever talk with you again. But other parties in this part of the world will not try to call your bluff and will compromise if they are approached for a violation.
Most Western businessmen fail in this part of the world because they try the Western approach here. If you negotiate in this part of the world. adopt their tactics and use it against them. It will make you succeed and you will gain lots of respect (not spoken out loudly though).
I am unsuccesfull myself many times because even though I have learned the rules over the years I am a softy. In many cases I do not stand firm enough. Though I am getting harder and because of that getting more respect.
Waerth
2008/6/12 Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th:
Then they weren't impressed enough with the face loosing potential. It isn't an easy thing. It must be done in such a way that you are the honorable party (and no not western honor, Asian/Chinese honor). And it must make you look smart and subtle (so absolutely not a lot of talking and compromising). And it must offer them a way out in which they can gain face to the public at large. So that even though they take a step back, publicly it will appear that they have gained. Very common thing in politics here. And what also helps is if you can offer them a scapegoat on whom to put all of the blame.
Problem is: How can a relatively small American foundation that is blocked from China have any credulity in threatening to let China's largest internet firm loose face?
Andre Engels wrote:
2008/6/12 Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th:
Then they weren't impressed enough with the face loosing potential. It isn't an easy thing. It must be done in such a way that you are the honorable party (and no not western honor, Asian/Chinese honor). And it must make you look smart and subtle (so absolutely not a lot of talking and compromising). And it must offer them a way out in which they can gain face to the public at large. So that even though they take a step back, publicly it will appear that they have gained. Very common thing in politics here. And what also helps is if you can offer them a scapegoat on whom to put all of the blame.
Problem is: How can a relatively small American foundation that is blocked from China have any credulity in threatening to let China's largest internet firm loose face?
There are always ways Andre. You just have to look carefully at the problem. You remember how the Chinese reacted when the riots in Tibet were all over the world ........ They lost face then, not just because of the riots but by them being aggressive in their reaction. That is one of the reasons that they backed off off their aggressive reactions pretty quickly. The other reason was that they realized that they were fanning nationalism which could turn ugly on themselves.
I am sure that there are ways. For a start you could start by copying their content onto Wikipedia. I know it violates our own rules, but you cannot always be the nicest kid on the block. If they complain, basically answer that by copying our content they acknowledged that their own content was for free. Then if they start to make a stink, present them with the letters that were send to them (I presume the Foundation tried to contact them) and to which they never reacted. Do this publicly offcourse.
Furthermore these kind of things are better not discussed on a public list where the "enemy" can read what you are planning!
Waerth
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th wrote:
Then they weren't impressed enough with the face loosing potential. It isn't an easy thing. It must be done in such a way that you are the honorable party (and no not western honor, Asian/Chinese honor). And it must make you look smart and subtle (so absolutely not a lot of talking and compromising). And it must offer them a way out in which they can gain face to the public at large. So that even though they take a step back, publicly it will appear that they have gained. Very common thing in politics here. And what also helps is if you can offer them a scapegoat on whom to put all of the blame.
That leaves only a Haiku:
When copying texts Honor people's rights Stick to the license
Sorry.
Fixed to make it a haiku (5-7-5)
When copying texts You must honor people's rights Stick to the license.
-dan
On 6/12/08, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th wrote:
Then they weren't impressed enough with the face loosing potential. It isn't an easy thing. It must be done in such a way that you are the honorable party (and no not western honor, Asian/Chinese honor). And it must make you look smart and subtle (so absolutely not a lot of talking and compromising). And it must offer them a way out in which they can gain face to the public at large. So that even though they take a step back, publicly it will appear that they have gained. Very common thing in politics here. And what also helps is if you can offer them a scapegoat on whom to put all of the blame.
That leaves only a Haiku:
When copying texts Honor people's rights Stick to the license
Sorry.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 3:25 PM, Dan Rosenthal drosenthal@wikimedia.org wrote:
Fixed to make it a haiku (5-7-5)
When copying texts You must honor people's rights Stick to the license.
Thanks, I can't count anymore ;-(
Magnus
The Chinese government official will take your letter. Translate it for his colleagues and they will have a big laugh over it in the Karaoke joint later that night. Having dealt with officials in that country and the whole region here. They couldn't care less about it.
Waerth
Just a weird question maybe, but has it been tried to just write them a letter and ask to remove the content? Please note that WMF is nto the author of the content, and does not own the content. individual authors such as yourself could of course. Therefore i doubt she could enforce the GFDL requirements. Or are you suggestion rather press/pr action?
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/6/11 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
Hi,
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia. http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%... You may click the link above to see how many they are. (We put "Featured articles", "Good articles", "DYK and other general articles" in groups.) Baidupedia users not only copied from zh.wp, but also from ja.wp and en.wp. I think we could now do the evidence collection works first, and I hope the list could be useful if one day the WMF takes some action to Baidu.
Regards, Titan -- Support the Wikimedia Foundation: http://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Dear Lodewijk,
I think we did send them letter to ask them to remove articles in 2006, in the name of Chinese Wikipedian community. But we got no response. I know it's not easy to deal with this issue, since WMF is not the copyright holder. We do the collection in case one day we will use, no matter we use it for legal purpose or others.
:)
Regards, Titan
2008/6/11 effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com:
Just a weird question maybe, but has it been tried to just write them a letter and ask to remove the content? Please note that WMF is nto the author of the content, and does not own the content. individual authors such as yourself could of course. Therefore i doubt she could enforce the GFDL requirements. Or are you suggestion rather press/pr action?
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/6/11 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
Hi,
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E7%99%BE%E5%BA%A6%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91%...
You may click the link above to see how many they are. (We put "Featured articles", "Good articles", "DYK and other general articles" in groups.) Baidupedia users not only copied from zh.wp, but also from ja.wp and
en.wp.
I think we could now do the evidence collection works first, and I hope
the
list could be useful if one day the WMF takes some action to Baidu.
Regards, Titan -- Support the Wikimedia Foundation: http://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:54:55 +0800 Von: "Titan Deng" theodoranian@gmail.com An: effeietsanders@gmail.com, "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections I think we did send them letter to ask them to remove articles in 2006, in the name of Chinese Wikipedian community. But we got no response.
We asked them to respect GFDL or to remove the articles, to clarify this point.
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
I agree that this is not as bad for us as for a random website. However, yo should think of the fact that the edited versions of the gfdl text of wikipedia now are no longer free, since there is no license information. That means a missed chance for free information. That would make it worth while for *me*.
Kind regards, Lodewijk
2008/6/12 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/6/12 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
They don't actually have to name Wikipedia - they do have to name the original writers and keep the text under GFDL. Doing that would be sufficient.
Perhaps they're afraid we'll say nice things about them if they do? :-)
Baidu has a US presence, doesn't it? Can they be approached as a first step?
- d.
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's not free dissemination, its theft.
-Dan
do they copy as a mirror would, and then add articles of their own, or do they use the text as part of articles with additions & subtractions of their own?
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's not free dissemination, its theft.
-Dan
-- Dan Rosenthal _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), they substantially use our content, but then do not include the GFDL or any links to it, and no attribution.
On 6/12/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
do they copy as a mirror would, and then add articles of their own, or do they use the text as part of articles with additions & subtractions of their own?
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which
were
copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under
our
license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under,
we
are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that
I,
for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I
knew
that it would be taken by another person and used under their name.
That's
not free dissemination, its theft.
-Dan
-- Dan Rosenthal _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/6/12 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), they substantially use our content, but then do not include the GFDL or any links to it, and no attribution.
They use our content at least some stuff they produced themselves and probably a fair amount of other people's (song lyrics and the like).
David Goodman wrote:
do they copy as a mirror would, and then add articles of their own, or do they use the text as part of articles with additions & subtractions of their own?
I believe it's the latter. They are of course free to edit as they will; that's allowed even if the editing is grossly distorted. Another important feature of GFDL is the viral effect that incorporating licensed material will have on the copyright of the new usage.
Ec
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other
I couldn't agree more with Henning comment above! This is why 99% of people are into the project, I believe.
Dan, your comment about infringement as theft is relevant only for western societies. AFAIK, in China, there is a booming internet market, that is both aggressive and in search for its own identity and market share. Copyright is seen as one of those bad western thingies, that west nicely uses to drain China even more (lets not forget - the reason why you can buy stuff so cheaply in US is that some Chinese guy is working his butt off). So, it is controversial who steals what and from whom. My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. I personally think we should respect the specificities of the Chinese situation, and help create free knowledge and build cooperation, instead of trying to enforce western laws.
Robert
I have trouble ascribing to the position that because China shares different values from the rest of the world, it's ok for them to steal other people's content, and to discourage contributors all over the world who want their works to be attributed. Given that China is a Berne convention signatory, it's not unreasonable to assume that the country desires to be a part of the world intellectual property community. If they want to be part of that group, they need to play by the rules. The WMF has the entire rest of the world to consider, not just China, and it's a rest of the world that values the sanctity of attribution.
-Dan
On 6/12/08, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under
our
license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other
I couldn't agree more with Henning comment above! This is why 99% of people are into the project, I believe.
Dan, your comment about infringement as theft is relevant only for western societies. AFAIK, in China, there is a booming internet market, that is both aggressive and in search for its own identity and market share. Copyright is seen as one of those bad western thingies, that west nicely uses to drain China even more (lets not forget - the reason why you can buy stuff so cheaply in US is that some Chinese guy is working his butt off). So, it is controversial who steals what and from whom. My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. I personally think we should respect the specificities of the Chinese situation, and help create free knowledge and build cooperation, instead of trying to enforce western laws.
Robert
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
Bryan
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
I agree, the current situation is not exactly great, cooperation to mutual benefit is far better, but enforcing the western-viewpoint at any cost is by far the worst ( which is what seems to be pushed by some people on this mailing list ).
Robert
I've yet to see anyone stating that we should enforce any viewpoint "at any cost".
-dan
On 6/12/08, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com
wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
I agree, the current situation is not exactly great, cooperation to mutual benefit is far better, but enforcing the western-viewpoint at any cost is by far the worst ( which is what seems to be pushed by some people on this mailing list ).
Robert
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
_________________________________________________________________ Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F...
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the aims of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
_________________________________________________________________ Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F...
but can't the iphone just access wikipedia or other project's via wap or gprs? all other phones can do that also.
greatzz huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the aims of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
you can access the net from the iphone but you can also access ebay yet, they have developed an app. This is because, they know when you have apps specifically designed for their site instead of a browser, you can do far more, more efficiently and easier.
and like I was saying before, we have nothing to loose.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:12:15 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
but can't the iphone just access wikipedia or other project's via wap or gprs? all other phones can do that also.
greatzz huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the aims of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
_________________________________________________________________ Never miss another e-mail with Hotmail on your mobile. http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=343869
i get it. i think that en.wiki already have made a wiki for smartphone.
i already edit with my phone. i can upload images. i would say : a application can't make it easy. because it is easy
huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
you can access the net from the iphone but you can also access ebay yet, they have developed an app. This is because, they know when you have apps specifically designed for their site instead of a browser, you can do far more, more efficiently and easier.
and like I was saying before, we have nothing to loose.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:12:15 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
but can't the iphone just access wikipedia or other project's via wap or gprs? all other phones can do that also.
greatzz huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the aims of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Never miss another e-mail with Hotmail on your mobile. http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=343869 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello
we could help you.
We have a solution wich could put wikipedia articles on mobile phone : http://wikiwix.mobi it s just a first step.
We could make it for any project of the fondation and all the language.
We could extract some information to put like this : http://wikiwix.com/?timeline=true&lang=en
Cordialement Martin Pascal tel : 02 32 40 23 69, fax : 02 32 61 45 26 gsm : 06 13 89 77 32 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deni Symonds" symode09@hotmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:16 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
you can access the net from the iphone but you can also access ebay yet, they have developed an app. This is because, they know when you have apps specifically designed for their site instead of a browser, you can do far more, more efficiently and easier.
and like I was saying before, we have nothing to loose.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:12:15 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
but can't the iphone just access wikipedia or other project's via wap or gprs? all other phones can do that also.
greatzz huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the aims of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F... _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Never miss another e-mail with Hotmail on your mobile. http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=343869 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The big problem with editing Wikis on an iPhone is that when you are in the edit screen, it is essentially impossible to scroll through a large block of text (I'm not talking about the main page where you can just finger scroll through it, but after you hit edit, and the text appears in your edit window). The iPhone's typing interface does not support scrolling, unfortunately. An iPhone store app, however, potentially gets around this problem.
-Dan On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:26 PM, Martin Pascal pmartin@linterweb.com wrote:
Hello
we could help you.
We have a solution wich could put wikipedia articles on mobile phone : http://wikiwix.mobi it s just a first step.
We could make it for any project of the fondation and all the language.
We could extract some information to put like this : http://wikiwix.com/?timeline=true&lang=en
Cordialement Martin Pascal tel : 02 32 40 23 69, fax : 02 32 61 45 26 gsm : 06 13 89 77 32 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Deni Symonds" symode09@hotmail.com To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 6:16 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
you can access the net from the iphone but you can also access ebay yet, they have developed an app. This is because, they know when you have apps specifically designed for their site instead of a browser, you can do far more, more efficiently and easier.
and like I was saying before, we have nothing to loose.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:12:15 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
but can't the iphone just access wikipedia or other project's via wap or gprs? all other phones can do that also.
greatzz huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Well, because a vast majority of all web access on cell phones, and because of the massive market, I think we definately should.... one of the
aims
of Wikimedia is to get free educational media onto as many mediums as possible. We have nothing to loose and therefore I believe we should take a serious attempt at it.
browncat
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:49:21 +0200 From: sterkebak@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] iPhone Application
hello,
am i wrong but it is already possible to look at wikipedia with a mobilephone?
or do we need a diferent application for the iphone?
greatzz, huib
2008/6/12, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F...
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Are you paid what you're worth? Find out: SEEK Salary Centre
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F...
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Never miss another e-mail with Hotmail on your mobile. http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=343869 _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Deni Symonds symode09@hotmail.com wrote:
Hey everyone!
I was just wondering how you think we could try and get an iPhone application developed. I think the best way would be to hold a competition and, then try and get apple to donate a macbook or iPod touch or something to the winner. Apple has incorporated Wikipedia's incorporation into OSX in the past and I think it would have a similar position with the iPhone. What do you think?
cheers
brown_cat
See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mobile_browser_testing and I think Wikitech-l (CC'ed) would probably be more help than Foundation-l in this.
I am fairly confident that unrelated developers will create a better solution in less time than if the foundation tried something.
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2008/06/12/review-websearch-native-app-a-week/
That's just one example from before the app store is even running, they will only get better.
This is a good thing, and a benefit of our open content model. :)
Robert Stojnic wrote:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
I agree, the current situation is not exactly great, cooperation to mutual benefit is far better, but enforcing the western-viewpoint at any cost is by far the worst ( which is what seems to be pushed by some people on this mailing list ).
Robert
Please reread my mails about handling it the Asian way .....
Waerth
Handling it "the asian way" may work for instances in asia. But what about in the West, where "losing face" is not a relevant concept? We have to think beyond this one instance to the general principle that applies. The actual methods with which we use to address these situations can certainly vary depending on where the other site is located and how much of our content they are using. But it is silly, and perhaps discriminatory, for us to say "Well, if it's an Asian site, we'll embarass them, but if they are not Asian we'll simply leave them alone unless we want to sue them". It's more effective for us to say "We won't tolerate this anywhere, and we will take firm action against reusage of our content in a way that flagrantly violates the GFDL. The precise type of action will vary depending on what the site is, where it is located, etc., what they are using, how big they are etc."
-Dan
On 6/12/08, Waerth waerth@asianet.co.th wrote:
Robert Stojnic wrote:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com
wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
I agree, the current situation is not exactly great, cooperation to mutual benefit is far better, but enforcing the western-viewpoint at any cost is by far the worst ( which is what seems to be pushed by some people on this mailing list ).
Robert
Please reread my mails about handling it the Asian way .....
Waerth _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
You assume that this is the western viewpoint. As Chiba signe dthe Bern convention, it also seems to be their official viewpoint
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Robert Stojnic rainmansr@gmail.com
wrote:
[...] My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. [...]
Even though that is probably true, stealing from somebody because he stole from you does not exactly sound like a good idea.
I agree, the current situation is not exactly great, cooperation to mutual benefit is far better, but enforcing the western-viewpoint at any cost is by far the worst ( which is what seems to be pushed by some people on this mailing list ).
Robert
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Robert Stojnic wrote:
Dan, your comment about infringement as theft is relevant only for western societies. AFAIK, in China, there is a booming internet market, that is both aggressive and in search for its own identity and market share. Copyright is seen as one of those bad western thingies, that west nicely uses to drain China even more (lets not forget - the reason why you can buy stuff so cheaply in US is that some Chinese guy is working his butt off). So, it is controversial who steals what and from whom. My personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage to steal from us. I personally think we should respect the specificities of the Chinese situation, and help create free knowledge and build cooperation, instead of trying to enforce western laws.
If you are going to build an analysis on the notion of theft and law enforcement, you also need to acknowledge that the concepts of "market" and "market share" are also a part of western capitalist thought.
My aim is not to enforce western laws as an end in themselves, but I have no compunctions about using those laws as a tool. Free licences can also be viewed as tools for achieving free knowledge. If we really want knowledge to be free we have to stop treating it as a market commodity. Once it belongs to everybody it's no longer stealable.
Ec
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If you are going to build an analysis on the notion of theft and law enforcement, you also need to acknowledge that the concepts of "market" and "market share" are also a part of western capitalist thought.
My aim is not to enforce western laws as an end in themselves, but I have no compunctions about using those laws as a tool. Free licences can also be viewed as tools for achieving free knowledge. If we really want knowledge to be free we have to stop treating it as a market commodity. Once it belongs to everybody it's no longer stealable.
Ec
Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding your position, I believe you and I are of the same mind here.
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
If you are going to build an analysis on the notion of theft and law enforcement, you also need to acknowledge that the concepts of "market" and "market share" are also a part of western capitalist thought.
My aim is not to enforce western laws as an end in themselves, but I have no compunctions about using those laws as a tool. Free licences can also be viewed as tools for achieving free knowledge. If we really want knowledge to be free we have to stop treating it as a market commodity. Once it belongs to everybody it's no longer stealable.
Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding your position, I believe you and I are of the same mind here.
I agree.
Our disagreement on the use of the word "theft" is really a secondary issue. I do think it's one of those loaded words that only serves to ratchet up the rhetoric. "Infringement" is a much less inflammatory word.
Ec
This is a tired old canard.
Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.
When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have, not taken it away from them.
For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA kool-aid.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dan Rosenthal Sent: 12 June 2008 15:19 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's not free dissemination, its theft.
-Dan
I disagree. Under our licenses, we require attribution for content. If someone else takes my content and uses it without attribution, they are saying it is theirs. That is theft. They have taken my intellectual property, and claimed it as their own. That's entirely different than the RIAA line, which says "If you download copyrighted music without paying, that's theft". There is a HUGE difference between sharing copyrighted content inappropriately, and claiming ownership and authorship of that content. The latter is 100% unacceptable; the former at least has moral arguments against it. I certainly am not a drinker of the RIAA kool-aid, nor am I trying to equate it to criminal acts like larceny and the like. I am trying to put it into perspective however; it's not something we should be condoning or supporting. That's one of the benefits of having free content -- to minimize the instances of copyright infringement. It's hard to infringe on free content -- you have to actively try. So those who DO actively go out of their way to take credit for what our contributors have made, ought to be viewed in a stricter light precisely because of the freedom of our content.
-Dan
On 6/12/08, Brian McNeil brian.mcneil@wikinewsie.org wrote:
This is a tired old canard.
Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.
When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have, not taken it away from them.
For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA kool-aid.
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dan Rosenthal Sent: 12 June 2008 15:19 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which
were
copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's not free dissemination, its theft.
-Dan
-- Dan Rosenthal _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Brian McNeil wrote:
Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.
When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have, not taken it away from them.
For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA kool-aid.
I think that "theft" was an unfortunate choice of words. A different word could be used without diminishing the importance of Baidu's improprieties.
Ec
In Chinese language, we use "剽竊" (Piao Qie) to describe the action of piracy without attribution. I just look up some online dictionary. 剽 could be translated as to steal or to rob, and 竊 means the action of theft.
For a man educated under the Chinese culture, to call the action of Baidupedia as theft is not violating the common sense.
Regards, Titan
2008/6/13 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
Brian McNeil wrote:
Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.
When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have, not taken it away from them.
For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA kool-aid.
I think that "theft" was an unfortunate choice of words. A different word could be used without diminishing the importance of Baidu's improprieties.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our license.
As if I didn't know that ... but I still don't believe it is applicable.
If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge.
Who cares? They distribute encyclopedic information into mainland China. That's what counts. Not some nifty details about licenses and attribution.
Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft.
NACK - IP piracy is not theft, it's illegal copying. Frankly, it's a shame when Wikipedians repeat the false analogies of the IP industry.
By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused.
Yeah sure ... try that with mainland China. Would be nice if it worked, but it's not that realistic for the time being. There "imitation" still "is the sincerest form of flattery."
I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's not free dissemination, its theft.
It's not theft - if it were, something would be taken from you, so someone else would hold it and you would not. IP piracy is illegal copying, because before, during and after you still hold your work - just someone else has another copy of it without your consent. That's illegal but it is not theft.
Ciao Henning
This may be a cultural difference between you and I then. In the U.S., intellectual property is property. It can be owned, and ownership rights asserted, and the fact that when others infringe upon it you are not missing it, does not mean that a theft has not occured. Consider a design for a new chemical that I am working on. If you take my notes and make the chemical yourself, I technically have not lost anything that I already owned. Yet, it is still theft because you are depriving me of the right to profit from my creation, the right to license it as I choose, the right to maintain and assert my ownership, etc. All those things are rights that I have, and it is the theft of the rights that is the problem, not the copying of the content.
I don't know if you have access to OTRS, but one of the common complaints that I see there, and one of the common questions I see from people unfamiliar with Wikipedia is "Why would you do all this for free?" or "How come other people can use my content". We satisfy those people by reassuring them that their authorship will be adequately protected by the GFDL, by ensuring that under the terms of the license, they will be credited as the author, and nobody can steal their authorship and ownership of the work by claiming it as their own.
But that's exactly what Baidupedia has done. The assurances to every single person who has ever contributed to a WMF project are undermined as long as Baidupedia uses our content while claiming it as their own, under copyright. It is not copying. Copying would be merely them reusing the content. It's their claim that THEY were the authors, that it belongs to them, that it is something they could potentially sue you over. That is the theft; the theft of the authorship and ownership rights of the Wikipedian who wrote the content. It is fundamentally unacceptable that we support that.
Nobody is saying they should have to take it down. We don't want them to do that, as long as we don't have an in-route to China. They need only come into compliance with the terms of the license. As I said before, the needs of every contributor everywhere else in the world come first.
You keep repeating that "it works different in mainlaind china". That doesn't matter. Every country works differently somehow from every other country. Our duty is not to China alone: it is to the world, a world that overwhelmingly supports that authors should have certain rights; a world that even China itself supports the enforcement of these rights. Baidupedia is not China. It is a company that is hurting our contributors. We should be looking for ways to heal them and fix the problem, not for ways to excuse their poor behavior.
-Dan On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted, nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under
our
license.
As if I didn't know that ... but I still don't believe it is applicable.
If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge.
Who cares? They distribute encyclopedic information into mainland China. That's what counts. Not some nifty details about licenses and attribution.
Copyright infringement != free knowledge. It == theft.
NACK - IP piracy is not theft, it's illegal copying. Frankly, it's a shame when Wikipedians repeat the false analogies of the IP industry.
By enforcing that other websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under,
we
are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some assurances that their work will be protected and not abused.
Yeah sure ... try that with mainland China. Would be nice if it worked, but it's not that realistic for the time being. There "imitation" still "is the sincerest form of flattery."
I know that I, for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I
knew
that it would be taken by another person and used under their name.
That's
not free dissemination, its theft.
It's not theft - if it were, something would be taken from you, so someone else would hold it and you would not. IP piracy is illegal copying, because before, during and after you still hold your work - just someone else has another copy of it without your consent. That's illegal but it is not theft.
Ciao Henning
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
But that's exactly what Baidupedia has done. The assurances to every single person who has ever contributed to a WMF project are undermined as long as Baidupedia uses our content while claiming it as their own, under copyright. It is not copying. Copying would be merely them reusing the content. It's their claim that THEY were the authors, that it belongs to them, that it is something they could potentially sue you over. That is the theft; the theft of the authorship and ownership rights of the Wikipedian who wrote the content. It is fundamentally unacceptable that we support that.
I may be grossly misreading what you just wrote above, or just not being well enough informed about all the statements about our licencing system on-wiki, but just to clarify; what precise "assurances" are you talking about?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
But that's exactly what Baidupedia has done. The assurances to every
single
person who has ever contributed to a WMF project are undermined as long
as
Baidupedia uses our content while claiming it as their own, under
copyright.
It is not copying. Copying would be merely them reusing the content. It's their claim that THEY were the authors, that it belongs to them, that it
is
something they could potentially sue you over. That is the theft; the
theft
of the authorship and ownership rights of the Wikipedian who wrote the content. It is fundamentally unacceptable that we support that.
I may be grossly misreading what you just wrote above, or just not being well enough informed about all the statements about our licencing system on-wiki, but just to clarify; what precise "assurances" are you talking about?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
The assurances that I am talking about are the statements that "by clicking
submit you are agreeing to license your submission under the GFDL". The GFDL requires attribution. By requiring that our contributors use the GFDL (or CC-BY-SA, or any other attribution required license), we are giving an assurance to our contributors that their work will remain attributed to them, and if it is not attributed to them they shall have some sort of remedies available to them.
By tacitly accepting Baidupedia's actions, we're undermining that assurance, by saying "Look, here's a wide swath of our work that is NOT attributed, and there's nothing that guarantees your work won't be included in it, and we're not going to do anything about it".
That's a huge turn-off to potential contributors.
For reference, here's what the FSF does
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/compliance
Basically they do actively investigate everything, and then file suit based on the violated parts that they do have copyright for. (bash, wget etc) while working with the other infringed copyright holders.
Maybe that model can be used for the WMF also, although I'm not sure if they have any component violated text.
Just FYI :)
2008/6/12 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
I may be grossly misreading what you just wrote above, or just not being well enough informed about all the statements about our licencing system on-wiki, but just to clarify; what precise "assurances" are you talking about?
The assurances that I am talking about are the statements that "by clicking submit you are agreeing to license your submission under the GFDL". The GFDL requires attribution. By requiring that our contributors use the GFDL (or CC-BY-SA, or any other attribution required license), we are giving an assurance to our contributors that their work will remain attributed to them, and if it is not attributed to them they shall have some sort of remedies available to them.
Whoa.
Saying "you agree to license it" is *really* not the same as "you agree to license it and we will enforce that licence for you", and I'm not sure we can assume everyone interprets it as being the latter.
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
But that's exactly what Baidupedia has done. The assurances to every
single
person who has ever contributed to a WMF project are undermined as long
as
Baidupedia uses our content while claiming it as their own, under
copyright.
It is not copying. Copying would be merely them reusing the content. It's their claim that THEY were the authors, that it belongs to them, that it
is
something they could potentially sue you over. That is the theft; the
theft
of the authorship and ownership rights of the Wikipedian who wrote the content. It is fundamentally unacceptable that we support that.
I may be grossly misreading what you just wrote above, or just not being well enough informed about all the statements about our licencing system on-wiki, but just to clarify; what precise "assurances" are you talking about?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
The assurances that I am talking about are the statements that "by clicking
submit you are agreeing to license your submission under the GFDL". The GFDL requires attribution. By requiring that our contributors use the GFDL (or CC-BY-SA, or any other attribution required license), we are giving an assurance to our contributors that their work will remain attributed to them, and if it is not attributed to them they shall have some sort of remedies available to them.
By tacitly accepting Baidupedia's actions, we're undermining that assurance, by saying "Look, here's a wide swath of our work that is NOT attributed, and there's nothing that guarantees your work won't be included in it, and we're not going to do anything about it".
That's a huge turn-off to potential contributors.
Thank you for clarifying that. I don't agree with the gloss you put on it 100 %, but that is okay.
I do agree though that we need to support efforts to have recourse against infringers.
Yours
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
This may be a cultural difference between you and I then. In the U.S., intellectual property is property.
This issue is not about the law - it is about politics. The law is perfectly clear. But the true question is:
Do we want at least some of our content to be distributed to mainland China so much, that we accept it is done by breaking the law?
And of course no one can stop an individual contributor to zh-WP from suing Baidu in any legal system and country, where Baidu has assets, for infringing his or her copyright. But posters in this thread repeated demanded that the Foundation get active to support the claims of individual authors.
For one, this is not possible under the current license (and any planned revision I have heard of). And: I don't think it would be wise, because I prefer getting at least some of our content inside the country over not getting it in and supporting starving IP lawyers.
The Great Firewall is a fact. And insisting on license issues and attribution would unfortunately be playing the game of the powers that are in the Peoples Republic. Because that would prohibit the people there from accessing even the noncontroversial content, that was available to them, because someone considered the distribution of knowledge more important then IP law. I think it is a safe bet, that Baidu will not attribute the content to Wikipedia authors and will not put parts of their system under the GFDL.
And beyond the issue at hand: There are so many infringing mirrors out there, that a service in China that hosts a bunch of non related articles copied by individuals is insignificant.
Ciao Henning
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:35 PM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
This may be a cultural difference between you and I then. In the U.S., intellectual property is property.
This issue is not about the law - it is about politics. The law is perfectly clear. But the true question is:
Do we want at least some of our content to be distributed to mainland China so much, that we accept it is done by breaking the law?
And of course no one can stop an individual contributor to zh-WP from suing Baidu in any legal system and country, where Baidu has assets, for infringing his or her copyright. But posters in this thread repeated demanded that the Foundation get active to support the claims of individual authors.
For one, this is not possible under the current license (and any planned revision I have heard of). And: I don't think it would be wise, because I prefer getting at least some of our content inside the country over not getting it in and supporting starving IP lawyers.
The Great Firewall is a fact. And insisting on license issues and attribution would unfortunately be playing the game of the powers that are in the Peoples Republic. Because that would prohibit the people there from accessing even the noncontroversial content, that was available to them, because someone considered the distribution of knowledge more important then IP law. I think it is a safe bet, that Baidu will not attribute the content to Wikipedia authors and will not put parts of their system under the GFDL.
And beyond the issue at hand: There are so many infringing mirrors out there, that a service in China that hosts a bunch of non related articles copied by individuals is insignificant.
Ciao Henning
You're setting up a false dichotomy here. The options are not "Allow Baidu to do whatever they want" and "Deny China any access to Wikipedia articles", with nothing in between.
Baidu could entirely credibly copy or mirror over Wikipedia articles, with GFDL and author history, just as easily as their users cut and paste now. If the political situation is such that they can't grab "the whole set" of wikipedia articles, that's unfortunate, but doesn't prevent them from taking a subset *under the licenses and with credit*.
We *can* and should ask them to put proper licenses and copyrights up.
We *should not* try and force them to take down the articles.
George Herbert wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:35 PM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
I think it is a safe bet, that Baidu will not attribute the content to Wikipedia authors and will not put parts of their system under the GFDL.
You're setting up a false dichotomy here. The options are not "Allow Baidu to do whatever they want" and "Deny China any access to Wikipedia articles", with nothing in between.
According to Titan Deng, that's what the zh-Wikipedians demanded.
Baidu could entirely credibly copy or mirror over Wikipedia articles, with GFDL and author history, just as easily as their users cut and paste now. If the political situation is such that they can't grab "the whole set" of wikipedia articles, that's unfortunate, but doesn't prevent them from taking a subset *under the licenses and with credit*.
They can't: They can't acknowledge that content came from a banned source and they certainly won't adopt a policy of free licenses, not even for a small part of their content. They want to own and control all their content.
And I do not advocate to even discuss that with Baidu - because if they get under pressure, they will at best abandon the content. My position is to keep that issue a low profile - essentially: ignore it - in order to give the people in mainland China access to as much of our content as possible, even for the price of breaking the law and the licenses. This is a political decision.
The management at Baidu is not important for our issue at hand. The three relevant groups are the authors in the zh-WP, individuals who copy WP-content to Baidupedia and the general public in the PRC. Let individuals take as much as they want and can safely use. Let them copy it into Baidupedia. Let them do whatever necessary to get our content inside the country. Let them use Baidupedia as Trojan horse. Screw the license stuff. Getting information to the people - that's the mission of Wikipedia. The license is just a means to that end, and could and should be ignored where counter indicated by reality.
Ciao Henning
PS: I'm from Germany. Almost twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell. The dissident groups in East-Germany needed nothing as much as information. Some Westerners smuggled political magazines into the country. The western public TV-stations build antennas to reach as much of eastern Germany as possible and had special shows that were targeted at Eastern Germany. The smuggled magazines were given from hand to hand and copied (by hand, no photocopy machines were available in eastern Germany), the West-German TV-stations bought international licenses only for their "own" audience in Western Germany and broadcasted the content to East-Germany as well.
Illegal? Sure - but it helped at least a tiny bit.
2008/6/15 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
George Herbert wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:35 PM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net wrote:
I think it is a safe bet, that Baidu will not attribute the content to Wikipedia authors and will not put parts of their system under the GFDL.
You're setting up a false dichotomy here. The options are not "Allow Baidu to do whatever they want" and "Deny China any access to Wikipedia articles", with nothing in between.
According to Titan Deng, that's what the zh-Wikipedians demanded.
I didn't say we Chinese Wikipedians ever tried to "Deny China any access to Wikipedia articles". I need to clarify this. I am here reporting what we are doing, but please don't put your words in my mouth.
Thanks.
Titan
Baidu could entirely credibly copy or mirror over Wikipedia articles, with GFDL and author history, just as easily as their users cut and paste now. If the political situation is such that they can't grab "the whole set" of wikipedia articles, that's unfortunate, but doesn't prevent them from taking a subset *under the licenses and with credit*.
They can't: They can't acknowledge that content came from a banned source and they certainly won't adopt a policy of free licenses, not even for a small part of their content. They want to own and control all their content.
And I do not advocate to even discuss that with Baidu - because if they get under pressure, they will at best abandon the content. My position is to keep that issue a low profile - essentially: ignore it - in order to give the people in mainland China access to as much of our content as possible, even for the price of breaking the law and the licenses. This is a political decision.
The management at Baidu is not important for our issue at hand. The three relevant groups are the authors in the zh-WP, individuals who copy WP-content to Baidupedia and the general public in the PRC. Let individuals take as much as they want and can safely use. Let them copy it into Baidupedia. Let them do whatever necessary to get our content inside the country. Let them use Baidupedia as Trojan horse. Screw the license stuff. Getting information to the people - that's the mission of Wikipedia. The license is just a means to that end, and could and should be ignored where counter indicated by reality.
Ciao Henning
PS: I'm from Germany. Almost twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell. The dissident groups in East-Germany needed nothing as much as information. Some Westerners smuggled political magazines into the country. The western public TV-stations build antennas to reach as much of eastern Germany as possible and had special shows that were targeted at Eastern Germany. The smuggled magazines were given from hand to hand and copied (by hand, no photocopy machines were available in eastern Germany), the West-German TV-stations bought international licenses only for their "own" audience in Western Germany and broadcasted the content to East-Germany as well.
Illegal? Sure - but it helped at least a tiny bit.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Henning Schlottmann wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
Baidu could entirely credibly copy or mirror over Wikipedia articles, with GFDL and author history, just as easily as their users cut and paste now. If the political situation is such that they can't grab "the whole set" of wikipedia articles, that's unfortunate, but doesn't prevent them from taking a subset *under the licenses and with credit*.
They can't: They can't acknowledge that content came from a banned source and they certainly won't adopt a policy of free licenses, not even for a small part of their content. They want to own and control all their content.
We're not asking them to acknowledge that it's from a banned site, only that it's from Wikipedia. Wikipedia may in fact be banned but where is there any acknowledgement from the PRC government that it is? Without an explicit statement from them it's hard to view the banning as anything other than a random act of bureaucracy.
Being so certain that they won't adopt free licences or that they want absolute ownership prejudicially cuts out a lot of possible negotiating positions. That hurts us more than it hurts them.
And I do not advocate to even discuss that with Baidu - because if they get under pressure, they will at best abandon the content. My position is to keep that issue a low profile - essentially: ignore it - in order to give the people in mainland China access to as much of our content as possible, even for the price of breaking the law and the licenses. This is a political decision.
That sounds a lot like the political decision of a certain powerful government that refuses to speak with its enemies. By taking such a hard line it manages to make things worse. Saying that we would be giving them access to as much of our content as possible is questionable when they can edit the material in a way that will best impose their point of view. If Baidu is so distorting the information a high profile is warranted to let the Chinese people know that they are not getting the whole story. The law (whose?) and the licences are only a means to the end of making knowledge available.
The management at Baidu is not important for our issue at hand. The three relevant groups are the authors in the zh-WP, individuals who copy WP-content to Baidupedia and the general public in the PRC. Let individuals take as much as they want and can safely use. Let them copy it into Baidupedia. Let them do whatever necessary to get our content inside the country. Let them use Baidupedia as Trojan horse. Screw the license stuff. Getting information to the people - that's the mission of Wikipedia. The license is just a means to that end, and could and should be ignored where counter indicated by reality.
Your Trojan horse is full of dead soldiers.
PS: I'm from Germany. Almost twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell. The dissident groups in East-Germany needed nothing as much as information. Some Westerners smuggled political magazines into the country. The western public TV-stations build antennas to reach as much of eastern Germany as possible and had special shows that were targeted at Eastern Germany. The smuggled magazines were given from hand to hand and copied (by hand, no photocopy machines were available in eastern Germany), the West-German TV-stations bought international licenses only for their "own" audience in Western Germany and broadcasted the content to East-Germany as well.
Your analogy would only be valid if the GDR government had been in charge of making the copies of the magazine articles.
Ec
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:25:05 +0200 Von: Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net An: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
You're setting up a false dichotomy here. The options are not "Allow Baidu to do whatever they want" and "Deny China any access to Wikipedia articles", with nothing in between.
According to Titan Deng, that's what the zh-Wikipedians demanded.
No, that's definitively wrong. We search every possibility to let china get access of our content, even part of it. We are even content if Baidu just mention that some content are under GFDL, we don't even demand that they note the content is from Wikipedia. The reason why we are so much concerned about Baidu is that we see here a serious threat against us by the policy of Baidu, as I have already described in other replies.
They can't: They can't acknowledge that content came from a banned source and they certainly won't adopt a policy of free licenses, not even for a small part of their content. They want to own and control all their content.
Oh they can. There are quite a number of articles on Baidu with a source remark of Wikipedia. There is at least one case we know of that an official chinese government website remarks the source as Wikipedia.
PS: I'm from Germany. Almost twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell. ...
The situation is a different one. Take parallels in history is mostly dangerous and incorrect. China is not a communist country any more though its governing party call itself communist. And Baidu is a company, which misuses law (or rather the lack of law in this case) to make business.
Greetings Ting
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
This may be a cultural difference between you and I then. In the U.S., intellectual property is property.
Henning is reciting standard Stallman doctrine, which most certainly is a U.S. point of view.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
Some Americans think differently to others.
-- Tim Starling
2008/6/12 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
There is a lot to be said for this approach. Until we can *ourselves* distribute this content to Internet users in China, in effect, we're over a barrel.
If we go to Baidu and demand "credit [Wikipedia authors] or take it down", what do we do if they say "okay, we'll take it down"? We'd have shot ourselves in the foot - there's a billion people who no longer have access to our content, and this is really not something we want to be doing.
And if they're smart, they'll see this. They'll see that all they need to do is say "sorry, no", because we'll have to back down; even a takedown could be enforced, we would be very unlikely to make it happen.
I say, leave it be until we're in a position to realistically negotiate with them.
2008/6/12 Henning Schlottmann h.schlottmann@gmx.net:
Titan Deng wrote:
We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
No, it's not true. If you can read the list (the link I gave), those articles are not controversial articles, not sensitive to the Chinese government at all. Baidupedia has political censorship, and their staff review and filter all materials which might be regarded as sensitive to Chinese government.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
The ban is not relative to their copyright violation. Wikipedia is not prohibited to mention. The Great Fire Wall blocks the website with its url ( wikipedia.org). At least, according to GFDL, they can still mention 5 main authors instead of mentioning Wikipedia.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
Our mission is distributing free knowledge, but what Baidu does is on the contrary way. The claim those articles "copyrighted" (as you can see the bottom part of every page of those articles with a little (C)2008 Baidu).
Regards, Titan
Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/6/12 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
No, it's not true. If you can read the list (the link I gave), those articles are not controversial articles, not sensitive to the Chinese government at all. Baidupedia has political censorship, and their staff review and filter all materials which might be regarded as sensitive to Chinese government.
I think this is a miscommunication - that is Henning's point. The articles Baidu reuses are the politically unimportant ones, ones which wouldn't need any censorship. As matters stand, Wikipedia can't get these articles out into China; the firewall blocks the zh.wp articles on Tiananmen Square and on cosmology without caring what's in them.
As a result, Baidu's copying of them means that people in China can at least get *some* of our content, rather than none at all.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
The ban is not relative to their copyright violation. Wikipedia is not prohibited to mention. The Great Fire Wall blocks the website with its url ( wikipedia.org). At least, according to GFDL, they can still mention 5 main authors instead of mentioning Wikipedia.
Mmm... this may work. Finding five main authors is so tricky that we usually recommend a link to the wp history page, though - and a link to a blocked site is pretty useless in terms of actually giving attribution!
2008/6/13 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
2008/6/12 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
No, it's not true. If you can read the list (the link I gave), those articles are not controversial articles, not sensitive to the Chinese government at all. Baidupedia has political censorship, and their staff review and filter all materials which might be regarded as sensitive to Chinese government.
I think this is a miscommunication - that is Henning's point. The articles Baidu reuses are the politically unimportant ones, ones which wouldn't need any censorship. As matters stand, Wikipedia can't get these articles out into China; the firewall blocks the zh.wp articles on Tiananmen Square and on cosmology without caring what's in them.
As a result, Baidu's copying of them means that people in China can at least get *some* of our content, rather than none at all.
By the way, Chinese Wikipedia is not only contributed by mainland Chinese users. Most of new articles are written by Taiwanese and Hong Kong Wikipedians. This time the issue is brought up due to a complaint from a Taiwanese Wikipedian who is a main author of a featured article which has been copied to Baidu for months. In Wikimania 2007 press conference, Florence mentioned Baidu's copyright infringement. Several days later Baidu had an official response stating that Wikimedia's accusation unreasonable, because their policy prohibits copyvio materials. ( http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/internet/2007-08/07/c... ) Baidu is a very bad example which might imply that other Chinese website could use Wikimedian contents without following GFDL.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
The ban is not relative to their copyright violation. Wikipedia is not prohibited to mention. The Great Fire Wall blocks the website with its
url (
wikipedia.org). At least, according to GFDL, they can still mention 5 main authors
instead
of mentioning Wikipedia.
Mmm... this may work. Finding five main authors is so tricky that we usually recommend a link to the wp history page, though - and a link to a blocked site is pretty useless in terms of actually giving attribution!
I think legally speaking it's not our responsibility to find ways for them to give attribution to the authors. It is not reasonable they use those articles and at the same time they need us to provide legal ways to them. Just too over.
Titan
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/6/12 Titan Deng theodoranian@gmail.com:
Mmm... this may work. Finding five main authors is so tricky that we usually recommend a link to the wp history page, though - and a link to a blocked site is pretty useless in terms of actually giving attribution!
I think legally speaking it's not our responsibility to find ways for them to give attribution to the authors. It is not reasonable they use those articles and at the same time they need us to provide legal ways to them. Just too over.
I think if we want them to provide attribution, it is a good thing for us to try and make that process as easy and efficient for them as possible. With normal mirrors - ones that don't operate behind the Great Firewall - we have a pretty good record of getting attribution sorted out, because we can email them and say very clearly and simply what they need to do - and because it's painless, they can do it without it costing them anything.
If we demanded those mirrors do a lot of work, on the other hand, we'd get a much lower success rate.
The three obvious options for giving attribution:
a) Do what everyone else does, and link to the Wikipedia article histories. Except that's meaningless for most of the readers - the vast majority of them who live in mainland China won't be able to follow the link, and the GFDL probably frowns a bit on a list of authors which you aren't allowed to see...
b) Say "is taken from Wikipedia", or "copyright Wikipedia", without the link, but this is in violation of the GFDL, just in a different way.
c) Import full Wikipedia histories - thus giving attribution. However, this runs into problems in that it provides a vast amount of new material needing vetted, and so means a lot more editorial oversight is needed from Baidu. Probably expensive.
c) Figure out main authors for each and every article, and attribute them (without links?) in the Baidu articles. Aha, problem solved.
This last one is obviously the best option, but how would they get those main authors? Working them all out by hand is incredibly time-consuming when you have an even moderately long article, so for it to be practical we need some way of generating them en masse.
It's a thorny problem even for us, and you'd expect us to be the experts - we've tried before and never really found a method that's reliable. If we want Baidu to do something like this, we'd stand a much better chance if we can find some way of generating those authors for them in advance, or identify an easy method they can use to do so.*
If we just say "well, they can sort it out themselves, but they ought to do something", it strikes me that we're going to just make it less likely the problem ever gets fixed.
Andrew Gray wrote:
If we demanded those mirrors do a lot of work, on the other hand, we'd get a much lower success rate.
The three obvious options for giving attribution:
a) Do what everyone else does, and link to the Wikipedia article histories. Except that's meaningless for most of the readers - the vast majority of them who live in mainland China won't be able to follow the link, and the GFDL probably frowns a bit on a list of authors which you aren't allowed to see...
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
Ec
Even besides the general principle, I think it is better for us to be proactive toward copyright a/o trademark infringement in Main Land China, in regard of Japanese Anime and trademarks which have been infringed in Main Land China: some copies were registered or claimed to be the original even in the Main Land China. Consequently, the Japanese original was or have been condemned as infringements a/o violation of Chinese copy. There is no reason I think we'll welcome a similar situation.
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:
If we demanded those mirrors do a lot of work, on the other hand, we'd get a much lower success rate.
The three obvious options for giving attribution:
a) Do what everyone else does, and link to the Wikipedia article histories. Except that's meaningless for most of the readers - the vast majority of them who live in mainland China won't be able to follow the link, and the GFDL probably frowns a bit on a list of authors which you aren't allowed to see...
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Yes, thank you Aphaia for pointing out this. This is also my biggest fear. Someday in the future, Baidu would accuse Wikipedia for violating their copyright (at least in China). This is why this is a foundation matter, and not a matter of individual authors.
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:18:03 +0900 Von: Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
Even besides the general principle, I think it is better for us to be proactive toward copyright a/o trademark infringement in Main Land China, in regard of Japanese Anime and trademarks which have been infringed in Main Land China: some copies were registered or claimed to be the original even in the Main Land China. Consequently, the Japanese original was or have been condemned as infringements a/o violation of Chinese copy. There is no reason I think we'll welcome a similar situation.
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Andrew Gray wrote:
If we demanded those mirrors do a lot of work, on the other hand, we'd get a much lower success rate.
The three obvious options for giving attribution:
a) Do what everyone else does, and link to the Wikipedia article histories. Except that's meaningless for most of the readers - the vast majority of them who live in mainland China won't be able to follow the link, and the GFDL probably frowns a bit on a list of authors which you aren't allowed to see...
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I don't think that the most important issue here is the revision stuff. At least, it is not to me. What strikes me more is that any adapted version would not be released to the GFDL again. Which means that zhwikipedia can not take over that information again (with proper history of course, to give the good example).
Having no authors on the website is something that is reversible, but not having the license mentioned is not. The issue is much more pressing imho. I think this would also give the chance to compliment Baidu in some way: we would beleive that they will improve our text!
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2008/6/13 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
Andrew Gray wrote:
If we demanded those mirrors do a lot of work, on the other hand, we'd get a much lower success rate.
The three obvious options for giving attribution:
a) Do what everyone else does, and link to the Wikipedia article histories. Except that's meaningless for most of the readers - the vast majority of them who live in mainland China won't be able to follow the link, and the GFDL probably frowns a bit on a list of authors which you aren't allowed to see...
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
effe iets anders wrote:
I don't think that the most important issue here is the revision stuff. At least, it is not to me. What strikes me more is that any adapted version would not be released to the GFDL again. Which means that zhwikipedia can not take over that information again (with proper history of course, to give the good example).
This is a good point. Nevertheless, it could be argued that since using our material requires that anyone who uses it must put their derivative under GFDL we can use it whether they explicitly identify the licence or not. In the same way that copyrights are automatic without the need to claim or register, so too would the application of GFDL. Their GFDL rights could be terminated for breach of licence, but the termination clause still allows users of their material to keep the licence if they are compliant with it.
Having no authors on the website is something that is reversible, but not having the license mentioned is not. The issue is much more pressing imho. I think this would also give the chance to compliment Baidu in some way: we would beleive that they will improve our text!
Sorry to say this, but I think you mean "complement". They don't deserve "compliments" for their behaviour. ;-) Mixing those two up is a common error, even among native English speakers
We should feel free to use their material when it is substantially based on a Wikipedia article. We should then give due credit to Baidu in the article's history. They wouldn't dare sue us for that! (Evil :-P ) Defending a legal action is much easier than prosecuting one.
Naturally a complementary relationship would be preferable.
Ec
On Jun 13, 2008, at 12:52 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
effe iets anders wrote:
Having no authors on the website is something that is reversible, but not having the license mentioned is not. The issue is much more pressing imho. I think this would also give the chance to compliment Baidu in some way: we would beleive that they will improve our text!
Sorry to say this, but I think you mean "complement". They don't deserve "compliments" for their behaviour. ;-) Mixing those two up is a common error, even among native English speakers
We should feel free to use their material when it is substantially based on a Wikipedia article. We should then give due credit to Baidu in the article's history. They wouldn't dare sue us for that! (Evil :-P ) Defending a legal action is much easier than prosecuting one.
Naturally a complementary relationship would be preferable.
Ec
Complementary is only a step or two away from parasitic (such as their relationship to us), but I too agree with this that where they have worthwhile material that is something we can import under the GFDL, we should do so. And if they don't like it, we can kindly point out that they're doing the same to us but violating the license terms as well.
-Dan
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Complementary is only a step or two away from parasitic (such as their relationship to us), but I too agree with this that where they have worthwhile material that is something we can import under the GFDL, we should do so. And if they don't like it, we can kindly point out that they're doing the same to us but violating the license terms as well.
-Dan
I'm not sure that's morally correct. I don't feel it's right to release a Baidupedia contributor's edits under the GFDL when they didn't know that the original material was available under the GFDL, or that their edits would be released as such. Of course, if Baidu agreed to use GFDL fairly, we could use the edits legally, because Baidu presumably holds for itself copyright to contributions.
What also should be considered if we ever went down this road is that we're not the only source they're "borrowing" from; apparently they're also using other sources like the Chinese encyclopedia Hoodong, and we could inadvertently violate their copyrights by using Baidu's altered versions.
I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want to know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly licensed under the GFDL?"
Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share- alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the original was (and did not agree to license your content under the GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative work?
We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
-Dan
On Jun 13, 2008, at 3:42 PM, Ryan wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
Complementary is only a step or two away from parasitic (such as their relationship to us), but I too agree with this that where they have worthwhile material that is something we can import under the GFDL, we should do so. And if they don't like it, we can kindly point out that they're doing the same to us but violating the license terms as well.
-Dan
I'm not sure that's morally correct. I don't feel it's right to release a Baidupedia contributor's edits under the GFDL when they didn't know that the original material was available under the GFDL, or that their edits would be released as such. Of course, if Baidu agreed to use GFDL fairly, we could use the edits legally, because Baidu presumably holds for itself copyright to contributions.
What also should be considered if we ever went down this road is that we're not the only source they're "borrowing" from; apparently they're also using other sources like the Chinese encyclopedia Hoodong, and we could inadvertently violate their copyrights by using Baidu's altered versions.
-- [[User:Ral315]] _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want to know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly licensed under the GFDL?"
Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share- alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the original was (and did not agree to license your content under the GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative work?
We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of the minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license, and likely cannot be held to it.
If they (the contributor) were, or should have been on notice that the material came from Wikipedia or was under a free license, there may not be an offer/acceptance issue (Baidupedia knows or reasonably should know that they are violating the license, and if the contributor knows or should know it too, then the contract is not void for lack of acceptance, though it may be void for other reasons).
Another concern is then if the new derivative is not under the GFDL, does that give rise to copyright infringement? Or does the old content divorce itself from the new content?
We've always thought in terms of "What if a static source uses our content without attribution" but how do things change when it is a collaborative or dynamic site that uses our content without attribution?
-Dan On Jun 13, 2008, at 4:25 PM, George Herbert wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want to know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly licensed under the GFDL?"
Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share- alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the original was (and did not agree to license your content under the GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative work?
We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of the minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license, and likely cannot be held to it.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:39 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
If they (the contributor) were, or should have been on notice that the material came from Wikipedia or was under a free license, there may not be an offer/acceptance issue (Baidupedia knows or reasonably should know that they are violating the license, and if the contributor knows or should know it too, then the contract is not void for lack of acceptance, though it may be void for other reasons).
We can't assume that they were or should have been on notice.
Baidupedia is, but their users aren't necessarily.
Another concern is then if the new derivative is not under the GFDL, does that give rise to copyright infringement? Or does the old content divorce itself from the new content?
We've always thought in terms of "What if a static source uses our content without attribution" but how do things change when it is a collaborative or dynamic site that uses our content without attribution?
Right, this opens up a whole can of worms.
Pushing Baidu to fix it, from the top down and correctly, is sort of important.
George Herbert wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote:
I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want to know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly licensed under the GFDL?"
Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share- alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the original was (and did not agree to license your content under the GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative work?
We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of the minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license, and likely cannot be held to it.
Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims for copyright. If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of those contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for their contributors.
Dan makes a good point about legal counsel. A responsible Board member needs to give closer scrutiny to legal implications before moving from proposal to implementation. Even then, legal advice is not completely binding. Reading and literally applying statutes in isolation from their context can produce bizarre results. Case law and the probability of adverse effects also play a role, as does the collective tolerance of the Board for what could happen.
In a mailing-list discussion we need to explore all possibilities. A premature determination that something is illegal or won't work closes the opportunity to follow that less travelled road that everyone has been overlooking. NPOV discussions are often best resolved by looking for that alternative wording that will make both sides happy.
While the moral arguments need to be considered we should not extend them to the point of self-righteousness. For now we don't have a strong enough factual framework to derive a meaningful moral conclusion.
Ec
Agreed, and I think we've come to some of the following conclusions:
1) What Baidupedia is doing is wrong. 2) Because of the Great Firewall, taking down Baidupedia is a net negative for us. 2.5) Therefore, we don't want them to be taken down. 3) We want to find a way to bring Baidupedia into compliance with the GFDL. 4) We also potentially want to use some of Baidupedia's content for ourselves too. 5) Because Baidupedia is a collaborative site instead of a static site, it faces different operational and legal implications than other cases.
Working from those we can start getting towards an ideal plan of action while avoiding the pitfalls of both jumping to decisions, and stagnation and inaction.
-Dan
On Jun 13, 2008, at 5:32 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote:
I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want to know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly licensed under the GFDL?"
Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share- alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the original was (and did not agree to license your content under the GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative work?
We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of the minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license, and likely cannot be held to it.
Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims for copyright. If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of those contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for their contributors.
Dan makes a good point about legal counsel. A responsible Board member needs to give closer scrutiny to legal implications before moving from proposal to implementation. Even then, legal advice is not completely binding. Reading and literally applying statutes in isolation from their context can produce bizarre results. Case law and the probability of adverse effects also play a role, as does the collective tolerance of the Board for what could happen.
In a mailing-list discussion we need to explore all possibilities. A premature determination that something is illegal or won't work closes the opportunity to follow that less travelled road that everyone has been overlooking. NPOV discussions are often best resolved by looking for that alternative wording that will make both sides happy.
While the moral arguments need to be considered we should not extend them to the point of self-righteousness. For now we don't have a strong enough factual framework to derive a meaningful moral conclusion.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:54:41 -0400 Von: Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
- What Baidupedia is doing is wrong.
Ack
- Because of the Great Firewall, taking down Baidupedia is a net negative for us.
That I don't agree. Fact is, we don't have the power to take it down, and we don't care if it is down or not. If Baidu is down or not doesn't have an influence on us. Baidu is not a mirror of Wikipedia. We have had contact with other agencies in China to build up a mirror (the foundation was informed about these contacts), but because of the issue of the GFW the contacts all run dead. We don't consider Baidu as a collaboration, we also don't consider them as a potential collaborator.
- We want to find a way to bring Baidupedia into compliance with the GFDL.
That would be fine. But that would not happen. Baidu uses a very muddy copyright policy porpusely, this was confirmed from inofficial channel.
- We also potentially want to use some of Baidupedia's content for ourselves too.
No, never. Because every content on Baidu is potentially copyviod, contents from Baidu on Wikipedia is a kill-argument. Whenever I see that the content originate from Baidu it is for me a kill creteria.
- Because Baidupedia is a collaborative site instead of a static
site, it faces different operational and legal implications than other cases.
Maybe in the future once a day. But now they don't see any neccesity to change their policy. To device a way to let them see the neccesity is maybe a method we should search for.
Greetings Ting
Ting Chen wrote:
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:54:41 -0400 Von: Dan Rosenthal <swatjester@gmail.com
- What Baidupedia is doing is wrong.
Ack
- Because of the Great Firewall, taking down Baidupedia is a net negative for us.
That I don't agree. Fact is, we don't have the power to take it down, and we don't care if it is down or not. If Baidu is down or not doesn't have an influence on us. Baidu is not a mirror of Wikipedia. We have had contact with other agencies in China to build up a mirror (the foundation was informed about these contacts), but because of the issue of the GFW the contacts all run dead. We don't consider Baidu as a collaboration, we also don't consider them as a potential collaborator.
The issue is one of free licensing. Under GFDL they have every right to use our material. If they play by the rules we have the right to use theirs. They are not bound to follow NPOV on their site, because it's their site. Whether it's editorially sound to use their material is quite a different question from having a legal right to use that material. Our efforts to set up a mirror in China have nothing to do with Baidupedia.
- We want to find a way to bring Baidupedia into compliance with the GFDL.
That would be fine. But that would not happen. Baidu uses a very muddy copyright policy porpusely, this was confirmed from inofficial channel.
Bringing them into compliance may require that they move away from such a muddy copyright policy. It doesn't help to be pessimistic about our prospects; that makes it difficult to look for possible solutions.
- We also potentially want to use some of Baidupedia's content for ourselves too.
No, never. Because every content on Baidu is potentially copyviod, contents from Baidu on Wikipedia is a kill-argument. Whenever I see that the content originate from Baidu it is for me a kill creteria.
That's a big leap between potentially copyvio and factually copyvio. This argument looks highly prejudicial since it leaves no room to consider the material on its own merits. If their article has significantly drawn on Wikipedia there may be implicit GFDL even if they don't say so. Also, drawing on their information and putting it in our own words would not be a copyvio because ideas are not copyrightable.
- Because Baidupedia is a collaborative site instead of a static
site, it faces different operational and legal implications than other cases.
Maybe in the future once a day. But now they don't see any neccesity to change their policy. To device a way to let them see the neccesity is maybe a method we should search for.
I think that that last point is exactly where we should be heading. They may not now see any necessity to change policy; we just need to find a convincing argument for change.
Ec
Hello Ray,
to be short, I fully agree with you.
Greetings Ting
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:42:54 -0700 Von: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
Ting Chen wrote:
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:54:41 -0400 Von: Dan Rosenthal <swatjester@gmail.com
- What Baidupedia is doing is wrong.
Ack
- Because of the Great Firewall, taking down Baidupedia is a net
negative for us.
That I don't agree. Fact is, we don't have the power to take it down,
and we don't care if it is down or not. If Baidu is down or not doesn't have an influence on us. Baidu is not a mirror of Wikipedia. We have had contact with other agencies in China to build up a mirror (the foundation was informed about these contacts), but because of the issue of the GFW the contacts all run dead. We don't consider Baidu as a collaboration, we also don't consider them as a potential collaborator.
The issue is one of free licensing. Under GFDL they have every right to use our material. If they play by the rules we have the right to use theirs. They are not bound to follow NPOV on their site, because it's their site. Whether it's editorially sound to use their material is quite a different question from having a legal right to use that material. Our efforts to set up a mirror in China have nothing to do with Baidupedia.
- We want to find a way to bring Baidupedia into compliance with the
GFDL.
That would be fine. But that would not happen. Baidu uses a very muddy
copyright policy porpusely, this was confirmed from inofficial channel.
Bringing them into compliance may require that they move away from such a muddy copyright policy. It doesn't help to be pessimistic about our prospects; that makes it difficult to look for possible solutions.
- We also potentially want to use some of Baidupedia's content for
ourselves too.
No, never. Because every content on Baidu is potentially copyviod,
contents from Baidu on Wikipedia is a kill-argument. Whenever I see that the content originate from Baidu it is for me a kill creteria.
That's a big leap between potentially copyvio and factually copyvio. This argument looks highly prejudicial since it leaves no room to consider the material on its own merits. If their article has significantly drawn on Wikipedia there may be implicit GFDL even if they don't say so. Also, drawing on their information and putting it in our own words would not be a copyvio because ideas are not copyrightable.
- Because Baidupedia is a collaborative site instead of a static
site, it faces different operational and legal implications than other cases.
Maybe in the future once a day. But now they don't see any neccesity to
change their policy. To device a way to let them see the neccesity is maybe a method we should search for.
I think that that last point is exactly where we should be heading. They may not now see any necessity to change policy; we just need to find a convincing argument for change.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The issue is one of free licensing. Under GFDL they have every right to use our material.
For us, it is an issue of free licensing. But in order to achieve any change in Baidu, we need to start out from a neutral point of view (NPOV) that is common to us and them. We might view Baidu as a surrogate of an encyclopedia in non-free country, but the owners are hardly marketing "Baidu, the non-free encyclopedia".
Further, I guess they are not very likely to post a policy stating "you are not allowed to copy material from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", because then their users would start to ask "what is Wikipedia? why can I not access that website? is their content so good that the policy must warn against copying stuff from them?". The Chinese government has no direct interest to market themselves as non-free.
So, what could be a common point of view? I don't know, but freedom of speech or GNU's sense of freedom doesn't sound very likely. I guess one could start with "it is important for China to enjoy free trade, and thus to be a part of WTO and WIPO" and continue to "in order to comply with WIPO agreements, Chinese government owned websites need to fully respect the copyright of foreign works. Mechanisms for correcting copyright mistakes, such as taking down copyrighted material, have to be functional and efficient". In order to push such issues forward, I believe there must be some muscle in the shape of WIPO sanctions. But do we have that muscle? What do we know about WIPO? Do we need to join forces with others who might be fighting Chinese copyright violations, such as RIAA and Microsoft? This feels alien.
I guess one could start with "it is important for China to enjoy free trade, and thus to be a part of WTO and WIPO" and continue to "in order to comply with WIPO agreements, Chinese government owned websites need to fully respect the copyright of foreign works.
First of all, Baidu is not chinese government owned. It is a private company.
Do we need to join forces with others who might be fighting Chinese copyright violations, such as RIAA and Microsoft? This feels alien.
I see us more in the line of FSF.
Greetings Ting
On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Ting Chen Wing.Philopp@gmx.de wrote:
I guess one could start with "it is important for China to enjoy free trade, and thus to be a part of WTO and WIPO" and continue to "in order to comply with WIPO agreements, Chinese government owned websites need to fully respect the copyright of foreign works.
First of all, Baidu is not chinese government owned. It is a private company.
Conveniently, a private company with multiple western directors and a listing on the US stock exchanges, which forces certain SEC regulation compliance...
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:32:14 -0700 Von: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims for copyright. If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of those contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for their contributors.
The copyright policy of Baidu is a typical nothing-saying-we-own-everything-but-we-are-not-responsible-for-everything-muddy-policy.
In total one can say: 1). Everything published on Baidu is copyrighted by Baidu. Without the approval of Baidu using any of their content would be pursued with lawsuit. (未经百度许可,任何人不得擅自(包括但不限于:以非法的方式复制、传播、展示、镜像、上载、下载)使用。否则,百度将依法追究法律责任。 This passage is from their copyright declaration). 2). The contributors for Baidupedia is responsible for not violating copyrights of other people. Baidu is not responsible for that. (百度百科的用户不得侵犯包括他人的著作权在内的知识产权以及其他权利。由于用户的相关帖子引起的任何知识产权纠纷,其责任在于用户本人,与百度百科无关。百度百科的用户未经著作权人的同意,对他人的作品进行全部或部分的复制,传播,拷贝,有可能侵害到他人的著作权时,不得把相关内容发布到百度百科上。These two sentences are from their user guide).
Greetings Ting
Ting Chen wrote:
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:32:14 -0700 Von: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims for copyright. If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of those contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for their contributors.
The copyright policy of Baidu is a typical nothing-saying-we-own-everything-but-we-are-not-responsible-for-everything-muddy-policy.
In total one can say: 1). Everything published on Baidu is copyrighted by Baidu. Without the approval of Baidu using any of their content would be pursued with lawsuit. (未经百度许可,任何人不得擅自(包括但不限于:以非法的方式复制、传播、展示、镜像、上载、下载)使用。否则,百度将依法追究法律责任。 This passage is from their copyright declaration). 2). The contributors for Baidupedia is responsible for not violating copyrights of other people. Baidu is not responsible for that. (百度百科的用户不得侵犯包括他人的著作权在内的知识产权以及其他权利。由于用户的相关帖子引起的任何知识产权纠纷,其责任在于用户本人,与百度百科无关。百度百科的用户未经著作权人的同意,对他人的作品进行全部或部分的复制,传播,拷贝,有可能侵害到他人的著作权时,不得把相关内容发布到百度百科上。These two sentences are from their user guide).
Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know.
By stating that they own everything it makes it easier for us. If they are misrepresenting copyrights to the extent that their users will rely on this that it is a problem between them and their contributors. We don't need to speculate about what might be happening there.
The second quote seems to say that they are trying to have it both ways. Claiming copyright (presumably without crediting any of their contributors) suggests that they have some degree of control over the content. Any claim that they are eligible for the defence of being an innocent ISP would probably not be valid.
Ec
2008/6/12 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
If Baidu is indeed actively vetting its material to ensure compliance with the firewall, I doubt they'd be happy about leaving in a link to a blocked site!
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
2008/6/12 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
I'm inclined to favour this option. For the users of Baidu outside of the PRC there will of course be no problems. PRC residents will still get their usual results to indicate a blocked site. Each time it will be a reminder to them that something is wrong, and they will be more inclined to attempt access through alternate channels. We shouldn't underestimate the ability of the average PRC computer geek to circumvent blocks.
If Baidu is indeed actively vetting its material to ensure compliance with the firewall, I doubt they'd be happy about leaving in a link to a blocked site!
That actually might be the easiest solution, though, because it doesn't cause any loss of face on their part.
It's not a Great Firewall policy problem to link to something outside it, which is blocked, as far as I know (as far as westerners have found out about what the policies really are and written about it).
Henning Schlottmann wrote:
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
This seems like one of those end-justifies-the-means arguments. It compromises principles for the sake of expediency. If we want knowledge to be free we also want it to remain free. Acknowledging the licence is more than being "nice", it's essential to free knowledge.
Ec
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 2:41 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Henning Schlottmann wrote:
Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge. Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they can't name this source.
But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
This seems like one of those end-justifies-the-means arguments. It compromises principles for the sake of expediency. If we want knowledge to be free we also want it to remain free. Acknowledging the licence is more than being "nice", it's essential to free knowledge.
Ec
Fully agreed with Ec. Acknowledgjng the license is acknowledging the document in concersn are free: without that, it may be wrongly claimed to be copyrighted, and hindered further distribution. License issue is crucial in my understanding to ensure the knowledge we've accumulated free in the true meaning.
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Fully agreed with Ec. Acknowledgjng the license is acknowledging the document in concersn are free: without that, it may be wrongly claimed to be copyrighted, and hindered further distribution. License issue is crucial in my understanding to ensure the knowledge we've accumulated free in the true meaning.
Not just "may be" wrongly claimed, it IS being wrongly claimed. And as I said earlier, not only does that hinder further distribution (because people will see copyright symbols and assume incorrectly that it actually is non-free content) but it also hinders further creation of new free works when people cannot be adequately assured that their licenses will be respected.
Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
Fully agreed with Ec. Acknowledgjng the license is acknowledging the document in concersn are free: without that, it may be wrongly claimed to be copyrighted, and hindered further distribution. License issue is crucial in my understanding to ensure the knowledge we've accumulated free in the true meaning.
Not just "may be" wrongly claimed, it IS being wrongly claimed. And as I said earlier, not only does that hinder further distribution (because people will see copyright symbols and assume incorrectly that it actually is non-free content) but it also hinders further creation of new free works when people cannot be adequately assured that their licenses will be respected.
This happens more frequently than it should. Very few modern books don't have a copyright notice; this includes reprints of old books that are indisputably in the public domain. The new copyright only applies to new material like a new introduction. It may also apply to compilations and formatting, but very few publishers are in a hurry to clarify these limits.
Ec
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org