On 6/3/06, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis. In fact, I think it's questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu over this. The only thing I see them doing *really* harmful is that they're censoring content, and this is perfectly legal under the terms of the GFDL anyway (I suppose Wikipedia could add an invariant section ranting about Chinese censorship, but it's not going to happen).
Anthony
Hoi, Please tell me how you arrive at your conclusion. What do you consider the costs, how did you quantify them.
The costs are mostly legal fees or the time spent by volunteers giving legal advice (which could be used elsewhere). Just to quantify them more exactly would require enough cost to me that it isn't worth it.
If you've know a lawyer willing to give an estimate as to how much it'd cost to successfully win a copyright infringement lawsuit against Baidu, I for one would love to hear it.
Hell, if you're one of those thousands of people whose copyright is being infringed, you're free to enter into a lawsuit yourself.
What are the expected benefits, are they economical, political or of another nature, how did you quantify them.
As I've said, I don't really see much of any benefit in suing Baidu. I suppose it'd be a test case for the GFDL. But if that's all you want there are plenty of other companies which would be a lot easier to sue.
The purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation is to write and distribute free content, not to stop other people from distributing mostly free content with a copyright notice attached to it.
How did you compare the one with the other and again how did you come to this conclusion..
Something > 0.
PS Did you consider the long term costs of doing nothing ?
I can't think of any.
Thanks, GerardM
You're welcome, Anthony