[Foundation-l] Bertelsmann publishes "Wikipedia Encyclopedia in One Volume"

[Anthony]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Specialised areas which might generate a fair amount of demand are
>  guides to fictional worlds. Obviously, there is a lot of interest
>  associated with these, and there may be a fair amount of competition
>  in terms of reference works. en.Wikipedia has a good number of
>  articles about fictional worlds associated with fantasy (Harry Potter,
>  Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune). Contributors tend to be very
>  interested in these areas and their coverage tends to be very good
>  (where coverage hasn't been deleted). If a guide to say... Lord of the
>  Rings, or (dare I mention) Pokemon, were compiled from Wikipedia
>  content and published and sold in book shops, a fair bit of funding
>  could be generated for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
Is there any precedent for whether or not that'd be legal, though?
[[Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group]] comes to
mind, though an encyclopedia has more potential for transformative use
than a trivia book.  No one's going to sue the WMF over something like
that, of course, and even if they did the non-commercial aspect would
be a strong factor in its favor, but adding a commercial factor and
putting it all in print might push it from fair use into copyright
infringement.

Ah, while posting this I see David Gerard has pointed out a more
recent and appropriate case: [[J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books|Legal
disputes over Harry Potter]]

>  Other specialised areas we might look at are collectors areas (stamps,
>  coins), enthusiast areas (airplanes, ships, cars), gardening...
>
Not sure how many of those are already started at Wikibooks, but one I
thought of before is apparently already started at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Field_Guide/Birds_-_Eastern_US_and_Canada

(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Gardening,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_Stamp_Catalogue, are already
started)

>  If there were the drive to compile articles into books and copyedit
>  them, would there be any effective way to print, bind and put them in
>  bookshops to be sold?
>
I'm skeptical.  The kind of books you're talking about (airplanes,
ships, cars, gardening, field guides) are typically the ones you find
in the bargain section of the bookstore for prices small publishers
can't really compete with.  And for the even more frugal you can
usually find that kind of content at the thrift store at prices which
are less than the value of the paper it's printed on (if the paper
were blank the price would probably be higher).  That's probably why
Bertelsmann is going for the current event/yearbook angle.  Wikipedia
does tend to produce decent content in that area before it makes it to
the bargain section.

Now, this skepticism is based on my US-centric view of things.  I'd
suspect it's similar in any well-populated first world country,
though.