[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

[Dan Rosenthal]

I have trouble ascribing to the position that because China shares different
values from the rest of the world, it's ok for them to steal other people's
content, and to discourage contributors all over the world who want their
works to be attributed. Given that China is a Berne convention signatory,
it's not unreasonable to assume that the country desires to be a part of the
world intellectual property community. If they want to be part of that
group, they need to play by the rules. The WMF has the entire rest of the
world to consider, not just China, and it's a rest of the world that values
the sanctity of attribution.

-Dan


On 6/12/08, Robert Stojnic <rainmansr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>
> >On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge.
> >>Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so
> >>people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the
> >>the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other
> >>parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content
> >>and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under
> our
> >license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in
> >compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to
> >say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright
> >infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other
> >
> >
>
> I couldn't agree more with Henning comment above! This is why 99% of
> people are into the project, I believe.
>
> Dan, your comment about infringement as theft is relevant only for
> western societies. AFAIK, in China, there is a booming internet market,
> that is both aggressive and in search for its own identity and market
> share. Copyright is seen as one of those bad western thingies, that west
> nicely uses to drain China even more (lets not forget - the reason why
> you can buy stuff so cheaply in US is that some Chinese guy is working
> his butt off). So, it is controversial who steals what and from whom. My
> personal POV is that we steal from China far much more than they manage
> to steal from us. I personally think we should respect the specificities
> of the Chinese situation, and help create free knowledge and build
> cooperation, instead of trying to enforce western laws.
>
> Robert
>
>
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-- 
Dan Rosenthal