On 1/3/07, Gurch <matthew.britton(a)btinternet.com> wrote:
So Google has basically created a database of all
Wikipedia's infoboxes,
and is serving up entries from them as search results on its website?
Does this count as mirroring our content? Are they in compliance with
whatever rules apply to whatever it is they're doing?
They are extracting mere facts, there is no copyright on facts. US law
(AFAIK) does not know a copyright on databases as such (different in
the EU). They are attributing the source along with a link on the
wikipedia site. IMHO, they are compliant in both the legal and the
moral part.
Aside from that, something concerns me here. These
snippets are
displayed right at the top of search pages, above the search results,
even when the Wikipedia article itself is nowhere near the top search
result. In other words, anyone who manages to sneak the right value in
at the critical moment when Google is re-indexing the page can achieve
an effect similar to a [[Googlebomb]], but even more powerful. How long
before people start craftily changing infobox labels and values in an
attempt to abuse this?
That would be pretty much pointless. In case you are worrying, you
might want to help bring the "stable version" feature back to life...