[Foundation-l] Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages

[Erik Moeller]

2010/12/4 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>:
> Personally, I think that this is a good opportunity to get money from
> payed ads. It is not even on Wikimedia servers.

As I said on wikien-l, the current Amazon.com use is not part of any
official relationship. We're concerned about the degree to which the
Amazon.com pages resemble Wikipedia pages. The content use itself is
clearly permitted, and we're not opposed to commercial use per se. On
the contrary, free licenses encourage this kind of experimentation by
anyone.

The potential issue with this kind of commercialization is that it
creates confusion about the "Wikipedia" brand and what it stands for.
Wikipedia is currently understood to be one of the few mainstream
sources of information that isn't commercialized, and which aims to
provide a neutral and inclusive view of any given topic. A third party
adding single-vendor shopping ads into the content, while the way the
content is presented closely resembles Wikipedia, threatens to
undermine that perception, as Amazon.com visitors may assume that this
is something that's part of our operating model.

This is why we're first and foremost concerned about the risk of
identity confusion here, about the impact of such confusion on how
Wikipedia is perceived, and about finding ways to reduce that risk.
We'll continue our exploration of this issue and will let you know as
things develop. It may also well be that this turns out to be a
short-lived experiment on Amazon.com's part.

In general, our relationship with businesses is shifting from
revenue-focused trademark licensing agreements to mission-focused
partnerships closely aligned with our strategic plan. For example,
we're trying to find the best possible partners to distribute very
large numbers of offline copies of Wikimedia content (e.g. on low-end
mobile phones used in the developing world, or as part of computing
projects targeting disadvantaged communities).
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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