[Foundation-l] BBC "5 Live Investigates" on Books LLC, Sunday night 9pm UTC

[SlimVirgin]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 06:40, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Just spoke to a researcher, Charlotte something, for BBC 5 Live
> Investigates, Sunday 9pm, this item likely to go out 9:45pm or so.
> This was just for her research, it wasn't a recorded piece.
>
> The piece is on Books LLC and similar operations, which sell reprints
> of Wikipedia articles as books on Amazon. She was after the Wikipedian
> viewpoint.
>
> I think there's a sense of annoyance among writers whose work is being
copied that the books are so expensive -- sometimes around $50 for a
10,000-word article -- and that the ads for them on Amazon don't make clear
enough that they're on Wikipedia for free.

The ones I'm thinking of, Alphascript Publishing, give the names of three
editors as though they might have written or edited the material, when in
fact it's lifted word for word.

Also, as you said, we've seen editors try to use them as sources, not
realizing they're in a hall of mirrors.

Sarah