[Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

Wed Jul 12 15:57:56 UTC 2006

"Morally", as you put it, this project raises no concerns. I would say
that it is "morally" good - using the work we have created, providing
Wikipedia in more media and raising money for Wikimedia. I wish you
the best of luck. Perhaps the only problem in this respect is that the
articles will be unedited (I assume?) and unverified. Our mistakes
will forever be distilled in ink. This is not a great concern since
there is currently no way to get 100% verified Wikipedia articles yet
anyway. Will you include a description of what Wikipedia is and a
disclaimer at the front of each book?

Legally, there are some issues to take note of. As I'm sure you know,
each book would need to contain a full copy of the GFDL 1.2 license
and would have to provide the names of a certain number of authors for
each article (as you mention in your post).

There have been some attempts at this kind of thing from within
Wikipedia. They are called "Readers" - compilations of articles (on,
say, Mammals) which are edited and presented in quite a pleasant
format. I suggest you attempt to work with the users who have worked
on Readers to get ideas for presentation/editing. It would be better
for all parties if you stay in communication with the community rather
than simply exist coldly outside.

May I ask how you are planning on printing and binding these books?
Will they be hardback or softback? What kind of presses, papers and
inks will you be using? Will you provide "template books" (like the
above readers) with precollated selections of articles on mammals or
whatnot?

Wikipedia's allowance for commercial use has always had these kind of
projects in mind. I wish you luck again and hope you keep in
communication with us.

On 12/07/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
> wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
> that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
> individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
> from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
> satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
> check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
> order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
> wikipedia articles.
>
> The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
> publicly announced.
>
> I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
> service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
> also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
>
> Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
> content for sale"
> (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
>
> I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
> the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
>
> * on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
> stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
>
> * below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
> original wikipedia article is shown
>
> * all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if possible
>
> * pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
> since we use the wikipedia dumps
>
> * we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
> the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to  the
> Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our service
>
> Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
> program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
> after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
> their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
> publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
> donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
> in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
> perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
> automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
>
> I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
> http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
> financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
> to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
> good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
> be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
> building pediapress.
>
> Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
> post their opinions.
>
> Volker Haas
>
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-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)