Thanks to [[user:DrBob|DrBob]] for finding this: Apparently wordIQ are not only infringing the GFDL and the copyright of wikipedia (or its contributers), but are also stealing our bandwidth. Images in the articles they have illegally copied from us are loaded from the wikipedia servers. (I did a quick test by replacing [[Image:BernardLortie.JPG]] with a modified version and having a look at http://www.wordiq.com/cgi-bin/knowledge/lookup.cgi?title=Bernard_Lortie)
My question: Is there any legal precedent that such action is illegal? From a pragmatic point of view, it is clearly wrong: they are making money with their (most probably spyware) toolbar at wikipedia's expense. Or, more precisely, Jimbo's expense. How do things like google's image search work. I believe they also load images from other's servers. Is there anything specified in robots.txt about this?
Best, Sascha Noyes
On Jan 15, 2004, at 09:54, Sascha Noyes wrote:
How do things like google's image search work. I believe they also load images from other's servers. Is there anything specified in robots.txt about this?
Google's image search loads the images (as it does the text) while spidering, then they create a thumbnail image and keep it locally. Browsing the thumbnailed results doesn't impinge on the servers where the images came from at all.
When you click a thumbnail, it sends you to a framed document which loads the page where it came from off the original server, and also in the top frame the image alone.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
OK, Jamesday has informed me that we could block this by setting up some referrer limitations. Is there a good reason why we would want to allow other websites to load images from wikipedia for display on their sites? (Except, eg. google)
Best, Sascha Noyes
Sascha Noyes wrote:
Thanks to [[user:DrBob|DrBob]] for finding this: Apparently wordIQ are not only infringing the GFDL and the copyright of wikipedia (or its contributers), but are also stealing our bandwidth. Images in the articles they have illegally copied from us are loaded from the wikipedia servers. (I did a quick test by replacing [[Image:BernardLortie.JPG]] with a modified version and having a look at http://www.wordiq.com/cgi-bin/knowledge/lookup.cgi?title=Bernard_Lortie)
My question: Is there any legal precedent that such action is illegal? From a pragmatic point of view, it is clearly wrong: they are making money with their (most probably spyware) toolbar at wikipedia's expense. Or, more precisely, Jimbo's expense. How do things like google's image search work. I believe they also load images from other's servers. Is there anything specified in robots.txt about this?
This kind of problem was entirely forseeable. There is consistent acceptance among Wikipedians of the principle that the material is there for anybody's use, and a common irritation when a user purports to apply his own copyrights. They do this not only with GFDL material, but also with material that is clearly in the public domain.
I don't think that any of this will ever be resolved until there is a legal determination of who owns the public domain, and who has the responsibility of defending the public domain. This is not a trivial question, and dismissing the question by saying that nobody owns the public domain does not provide us with any kind of solution. When it comes to GFDL material, or any other similarly licensed material, there is a collective right owned by a group which is much smaller than "the public". Still, what remains undefined is who has the right or responsibility to take the necessary action on behalf of the collective group.
Ec
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes:
This kind of problem was entirely forseeable. There is consistent acceptance among Wikipedians of the principle that the material is there for anybody's use, and a common irritation when a user purports to apply his own copyrights.
You missed the point.
1. User must obey the license (e.g., they are not allowed to make the material proprietary).
2. The main complaint was, a third party is abusing foreign bandwidth (with "deep links"). Even if the material is free this does not mean they are allowed to provide inline links to wikipedia.org. They must download the pictures and serve them from their own server.
There is/was also a german pseudo mirror which let wikipedia.org werve the images. At least in Germany this isn't allowed.
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net writes:
This kind of problem was entirely forseeable. There is consistent acceptance among Wikipedians of the principle that the material is there for anybody's use, and a common irritation when a user purports to apply his own copyrights.
You missed the point.
- User must obey the license (e.g., they are not allowed to make the
material proprietary).
There is a difference between saying that a user must obey the license, and being ready to do something about it when he doesn't
- The main complaint was, a third party is abusing foreign bandwidth
(with "deep links"). Even if the material is free this does not mean they are allowed to provide inline links to wikipedia.org. They must download the pictures and serve them from their own server.
There is/was also a german pseudo mirror which let wikipedia.org werve the images. At least in Germany this isn't allowed.
Again, no dispute. It is a question of how to enforce this.
Sascha Noyes wrote:
Thanks to [[user:DrBob|DrBob]] for finding this: Apparently wordIQ are not only infringing the GFDL and the copyright of wikipedia (or its contributers), but are also stealing our bandwidth. Images in the articles they have illegally copied from us are loaded from the wikipedia servers. (I did a quick test by replacing [[Image:BernardLortie.JPG]] with a modified version and having a look at http://www.wordiq.com/cgi-bin/knowledge/lookup.cgi?title=Bernard_Lortie)
Can we block this? I know on UnrealWiki we block images that are not embedded in our pages.
On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 20:01:15 +0000, tarquin wrote:
Can we block this? I know on UnrealWiki we block images that are not embedded in our pages.
We can do a conditional rewrite rule in Apache that tests for the referrer and serves an 'explaining' image if it's not wikipedia... I can already picture some nice pictures to serve ;-)
sample .htaccess This one is opt-in abusers. most times it's used the other way round.
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer ".*evilcorp.*" block=1
Order Deny, Allow Deny from env=block ErrorDocument 403 youstealimages.png
<FilesMatch ".(gif|jpg|png)$"> Order Deny,Allow Deny from env=block </FilesMatch>
ciao, tom
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