[Wikimedia-l] Planned school curriculum by MPAA

[???]

On 27/09/2013 15:37, Andrew Lih wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 4:19 PM, ??? <wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Most do. Most of the things we hold to be culturally significant are
>> indeed paid. In fact wikipedia wouldn't exist if it was for the content in
>> books, magazines, and articles that people had been paid to produce.
>>
>>
> Seeing no real identifying information from your email address, I'm not
> sure if this is just troll-bait.


The above ignored as petulance.


> But you should read up on public domain, government sources, Creative
> Commons and their roles in Wikipedia.

I'm well aware of all such. Suffice to say that most of the PD was at 
one time paid content. You wouldn't have Tom Sawyer, Pride and 
Prejudiced, Jemima Puddleduck, Little Women, Wuthering Heights, or 
millions of other works if it wasn't for paid content. Paid content 
allowed Jan Austen, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte 
sisters, and many others to live independent lives. Paid content 
supported Jefferson's family after his death, when James Maddison 
arranged to have his papers published.

The bulk of wikipedia is the result of paid content. The foundation of 
it is the 1000s of articles imported from Britannica and other early 
20th century works. Even today almost every article on wikipedia is the 
result of paid content. The references used were almost all paid content 
at one time or another. Unless the project has abandoned NOR and SYNTH 
the articles are simply a conglomerate of paid content.

The subject matter of the bulk of the articles are dependent on paid 
content, that includes the articles on actors, TV shows, books, music, 
musicians, films. All of it the result of paid content, all of it the 
things that people want to read about.