[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Tue Jul 4 02:16:06 UTC 2006

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the  
>most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it  
>using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the  
>Foundation (and hence, in violation of  our trademark), it is attributing  the 
>content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any  copyvios 
>in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on  Demand 
>publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such  an 
>arrangement for precisely these reasons.
> 
>Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the  
>Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable  
>discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books  
>online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will 
>*not*  do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a  
>considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the  Wikijunior 
>project. 
> 
>This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally  
>on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of 
>what  they are doing.
> 
>Danny
> 
> 
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>
I have reviewed this website and it appears to violate the Wikimedia 
Foundation's trademark rights. I don't think the content is an issue, 
but the use of the Wikimedia Foundations trademarks and trading on the 
goodwill of the Foundation seems to impinge on its rights. We are also 
publishing College Level textbooks in Cherokee from Wikipedia content, 
however, we are not selling the textbooks, we are paying for the 
printings ourselves and donating the books to the Cherokee Nation 
language immersion programs and donating them to our schools of 
information technology.

Jeff