[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

[Brian McNeil]

This is a tired old canard.

Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.

When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have,
not taken it away from them.

For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you
equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA
kool-aid.


Brian McNeil

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dan Rosenthal
Sent: 12 June 2008 15:19
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Titan Deng wrote:
> > We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which were
> > copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
>
> What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
>
> 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.
>
> Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and
> give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they
> can't name this source.
>
> But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the
> second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until
> the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
>
> Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted,
nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of
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
websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under, we
are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some
assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I,
for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I knew
that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's
not free dissemination, its theft.

-Dan

-- 
Dan Rosenthal
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l