[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.
I got this email whilst on the phone to Charlotte. :-) I had a broadly similar conversation with her, also covering 'fact laundering' a bit, and generally giving her a bit more background on print-on-demand books. Hopefully she'll talk to Amazon to get their point of view on this - as I think this is mostly Amazon's problem to solve.
Has anyone been in touch with Amazon on this issue?
Thanks, Mike Peel
On 28 Jan 2011, at 12:40, David Gerard wrote:
[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.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 28 January 2011 12:44, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Has anyone been in touch with Amazon on this issue?
WMF hasn't been, I believe - though I wouldn't be sorry if we were! - but there have been a number of individual complaints to Amazon made about it, by purchasers, mostly getting brush-offs in response. It's one of those annoying situations where the offending party is compliant with the strict letter of the rules but is nevertheless, and entirely without a doubt, reliant on misleading its customers.
(On the other hand, at least their decision to obfuscate their source means we don't end up getting the backlash from this sort of business practice. Swings and roundabouts...)
The basic problem is not that they are using "our" pages, but that they are rubbish, with badly selected versions of selected articles, no editorial oversight, as I understand it with external links still highlighted, but no urls provided, etc etc...
I had the good fortune to work in the low-run print industry for a while, so I am aware that physically good quality books can be produced automatically, however if the customer attitude that is reflected by the other aspects we have seen of these books is reflected in the binding and printing I wouldn't expect them to survive a second reading - assuming any one wanted to read them.
On 28/01/2011 13:27, Andrew Gray wrote:
On 28 January 2011 12:44, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
Has anyone been in touch with Amazon on this issue?
WMF hasn't been, I believe - though I wouldn't be sorry if we were! - but there have been a number of individual complaints to Amazon made about it, by purchasers, mostly getting brush-offs in response. It's one of those annoying situations where the offending party is compliant with the strict letter of the rules but is nevertheless, and entirely without a doubt, reliant on misleading its customers.
(On the other hand, at least their decision to obfuscate their source means we don't end up getting the backlash from this sort of business practice. Swings and roundabouts...)
On 28/01/2011 12:40, David Gerard wrote:
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.
I have found this whilst doing research online. A "new" source just happens to be a copy of the article elsewhere on the Net.
Gordo
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