[Wikipedia-l] blatant state-sponsored copyright violations (by Baide Baiku of the PRC)

Sat Jun 3 20:50:48 UTC 2006

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> over this.
I think some things less drastic and cheaper than suing can be done:

1. Officially but politely request that they take some simple, concrete 
steps that we outline.  Perhaps they're simply confused by the GFDL 
(understandable), and would comply if we told them exactly what we'd 
like them to do.  Having a Chinese speaker to help with this might be 
useful.

2. Failing that, somewhat more insistently note that this isn't an 
optional set of steps, and mildly threaten to embarrass them publicly if 
they don't comply.

3. Failing that, issue a short press release or open letter publicly 
noting that they're violating the GFDL, to both produce some public 
pressure on them to comply, and at the very least to warn people about 
the nature of the project.

The only things needed for this are someone who can write Chinese and 
Wikimedia Foundation approval to send an official letter.

-Mark