[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copy&pasted books from Wikipedia

[Robert Horning]

Renata St wrote:
> I am not objecting to publishing Wikipedia. If someone wants to put an
> honest effort into producing Wikipedia CDs/DVDs/books -- more power to them.
> But please label in big clear letters "copied from Wikipedia" on the cover
> for everyone to see. I know German Wikipedia was published on a DVD -- I
> have zero objections to that. I also know that the "book extension" to
> mediawiki was added exactly for this purpose. But in this particular case I
> think it's rather abusive.
>
> Renata
>   

Wading into this discussion with a firesuit, I'd like to point out that 
my own experience in publishing a book based on content from a Wikimedia 
project (in my case it was the print publication of the Wikijunior Big 
Cats book on Wikibooks) I had a pretty nasty response from the WMF board 
in regards to the use of any Wikimedia trademark that I am gun shy from 
even mentioning that the content might have even a mention of a 
Wikimedia "trademark" like "Wikipedia".

I'll admit that I made some mistakes in creating that book, including an 
assumption that the WMF could be listed as one of the "authors" and the 
nebulous issue of the use of the working title of the book on Wikibooks, 
which used the name "Wikijunior" prominently on the cover (presumably 
one of the invariant sections under the GFDL.... depending on how you 
interpreted that clause).  Even so, the deliberate actions of the WMF 
board in this case killed this particular effort to independently 
publish on paper content from at least one Wikimedia project.

I acknowledge that about the only real asset that the WMF has to work 
with in terms of fund raising is the licensing of their trademarks.  
Unfortunately, even now, the formal WMF policies in terms of when and 
where these trademarks might legitimately be used by 3rd parties without 
formally entering into a legal contract with the WMF is quite ambiguous 
and more akin to wondering what the legal limits of using any commercial 
trademark like "Coca-Cola" might be (is this even an illegal use of 
trademark)?

 From this experience, it is to me no small wonder that somebody trying 
to republish content from Wikipedia might even have some formal legal 
advise to simply not even mention that the content came from Wikipedia 
or any other Wikimedia website, and try to abide by the most strict 
interpretation of the content licensing (GFDL/CC-by-SA, ect.) that does 
exist.

In my case, I would like to acknowledge the role of the WMF and the 
specific projects like Wikipedia, Wikinews, or Wikibooks that 
publications like this came from.  But once burned, it becomes hard to 
come back and try again.

No, I am not affiliated with Alphascript either, although it sounds like 
something I wouldn't mind trying to duplicate at some point in the 
future.  As I said, I even tried.

-- Robert Horning
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