Books, LLC. respond. They say they included Wikipedia URLs on their pages, but Amazon removed them.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andrew andrew@booksllc.net Date: 1 February 2011 23:29 Subject: BBC "5 Live Investigates" To: dgerard@gmail.com, slimvirgin@gmail.com, geniice@gmail.com, thewub.wiki@gmail.com
Hi David Gerard,
I totally understand your concern about Wikipedia getting proper credit on wiki books! And I understand how annoying it is when that doesn’t happen.
What Charlotte was investigating, as I understand it, was why Amazon in the UK had dropped the wiki book descriptions we (Books LLC) provide them with.
Those descriptions credit Wikipedia as the source, include an excerpt of one of the Wikipedia articles, a URL to read the full article at Wikipedia, and the titles of other Wikipedia articles in the book (space permitting). The book itself credits Wikipedia on the publisher’s page, the introduction and at the end of every article. I agree with you that readers have a right to that information. Hopefully, with our continued pleading Amazon UK will provide it.
While Amazon didn’t explained why they dropped the Wikipedia credits, they did say that they don’t allow URLs in book descriptions. I guess they don’t want their customers leaving Amazon and going to Wikipedia.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please do let me know. I will be happy to help in anyway I can.
Kind Regards,
Andrew Williams
Public Relations Manager
Books LLC
BBC "5 Live Investigates" on Books LLC, Sunday night 9pm UTC Remove Highlighting
________________________________________
[.To WMUK-l for local interest, and foundation-l as the issue's been
discussed there at length.]
Just spoke to a researcher, Charlotte something, for BBC 5 Live
Investigates, Sunday 9pm, this item likely to go out 9:45pm or so.
This was just for her research, it wasn't a recorded piece.
The piece is on Books LLC and similar operations, which sell reprints
of Wikipedia articles as books on Amazon. She was after the Wikipedian
viewpoint.
I said that it's entirely legal - that you can use our stuff without
permission, even commercially, and we like that - "Please, use our
stuff!" - you just have to give credit and let other people reuse your
version: "share and share alike."
So the only issue is that it isn't clear enough these books are just
Wikipedia reprints. For us, the annoyance - I said that "annoyance" is
probably the word - is when a Wikipedian finds one of these books,
goes "aha, a source!", buys it and ... discovers it's just reprints of
stuff they have. "While trademark is an issue, we'd like them or
Amazon to make it a *bit* clearer that these texts are Wikipedia
reprints."
She wasn't clear on the business model. I said these are
print-on-demand books, where *no* copies exist until someone orders
one, at which point a single copy is printed and sent. POD is *very
good* these days - you can send a PDF to a machine, and the machine
will produce an *absolutely beautiful* perfect-bound book for you,
which previously would have been quite pricey. This is enough for them
to have a tiny, tiny niche.
I also pointed out that anyone can make their own PDFs of Wikipedia
articles and some of the projects have partnerships with outside
companies to do nice printed books of Wikipedia reprints. But in such
cases, everyone is very clear on what they're getting: a nice printed
physical copy of content they already have for free on the web.
I tried to answer very descriptively, as I can't speak *for* 160,000
people, but there's been enough foundation-l and related discussion to
get an idea of what people think. My apologies if I missed bits, this
was off the top of my head without referring to nuances of discussion
:-)
- d.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l [at] lists
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
That seems generally consistent with typical practices on Amazon.com, which are oriented toward maintaining a walled garden and avoiding any kind of outbound link. It's really an extension of standard business practice for any commercial distributor or middleman who doesn't want to be cut out of a deal, and that's what Amazon is writ large. You can see it in how merchandise from third-party sellers is handled. Even if Amazon doesn't carry the item itself, and even if the seller with a listing on Amazon actually has an independent website, everything about the listing is structured to avoid any hint that such a website exists, even to cover shipping terms or return policies. Unfortunately, this philosophy also makes Amazon.com quite bad at standard practices for giving credit where it is due. (And no, linking to IMDB doesn't count, since they own it.)
--Michael Snow
On 2/1/2011 3:31 PM, David Gerard wrote:
Books, LLC. respond. They say they included Wikipedia URLs on their pages, but Amazon removed them.
- d.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andrewandrew@booksllc.net Date: 1 February 2011 23:29 Subject: BBC "5 Live Investigates" To: dgerard@gmail.com, slimvirgin@gmail.com, geniice@gmail.com, thewub.wiki@gmail.com
Hi David Gerard,
I totally understand your concern about Wikipedia getting proper credit on wiki books! And I understand how annoying it is when that doesn’t happen.
What Charlotte was investigating, as I understand it, was why Amazon in the UK had dropped the wiki book descriptions we (Books LLC) provide them with.
Those descriptions credit Wikipedia as the source, include an excerpt of one of the Wikipedia articles, a URL to read the full article at Wikipedia, and the titles of other Wikipedia articles in the book (space permitting). The book itself credits Wikipedia on the publisher’s page, the introduction and at the end of every article. I agree with you that readers have a right to that information. Hopefully, with our continued pleading Amazon UK will provide it.
While Amazon didn’t explained why they dropped the Wikipedia credits, they did say that they don’t allow URLs in book descriptions. I guess they don’t want their customers leaving Amazon and going to Wikipedia.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please do let me know. I will be happy to help in anyway I can.
Kind Regards,
Andrew Williams
Public Relations Manager
Books LLC
BBC "5 Live Investigates" on Books LLC, Sunday night 9pm UTC Remove Highlighting
[.To WMUK-l for local interest, and foundation-l as the issue's been
discussed there at length.]
Just spoke to a researcher, Charlotte something, for BBC 5 Live
Investigates, Sunday 9pm, this item likely to go out 9:45pm or so.
This was just for her research, it wasn't a recorded piece.
The piece is on Books LLC and similar operations, which sell reprints
of Wikipedia articles as books on Amazon. She was after the Wikipedian
viewpoint.
I said that it's entirely legal - that you can use our stuff without
permission, even commercially, and we like that - "Please, use our
stuff!" - you just have to give credit and let other people reuse your
version: "share and share alike."
So the only issue is that it isn't clear enough these books are just
Wikipedia reprints. For us, the annoyance - I said that "annoyance" is
probably the word - is when a Wikipedian finds one of these books,
goes "aha, a source!", buys it and ... discovers it's just reprints of
stuff they have. "While trademark is an issue, we'd like them or
Amazon to make it a *bit* clearer that these texts are Wikipedia
reprints."
She wasn't clear on the business model. I said these are
print-on-demand books, where *no* copies exist until someone orders
one, at which point a single copy is printed and sent. POD is *very
good* these days - you can send a PDF to a machine, and the machine
will produce an *absolutely beautiful* perfect-bound book for you,
which previously would have been quite pricey. This is enough for them
to have a tiny, tiny niche.
I also pointed out that anyone can make their own PDFs of Wikipedia
articles and some of the projects have partnerships with outside
companies to do nice printed books of Wikipedia reprints. But in such
cases, everyone is very clear on what they're getting: a nice printed
physical copy of content they already have for free on the web.
I tried to answer very descriptively, as I can't speak *for* 160,000
people, but there's been enough foundation-l and related discussion to
get an idea of what people think. My apologies if I missed bits, this
was off the top of my head without referring to nuances of discussion
:-)
- d.
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l [at] lists
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
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org