[Foundation-l] Copies of Wikipedia's articles found on Knol

Mon Jul 28 17:47:36 UTC 2008

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Amazing how the Knol, hailed as a competitor to Wikipedia, has so quickly
> began stealing content from Wikipedia's contributors, faking the license
> terms, and essentially plagiarizing en masse.

Wikipedia, Meet "Web 2.0",  "Web 2.0" meet Wikipedia.  Consider the
amount of effort it would take to stopper the constant fountain of
plagiarism and illicit copies (well meaning and evil alike) and then
you'll understand Viacom's postion in Viacom v Youtube.

For whatever its worth I smacked the flag inappropriate content button
on a bunch of the earliest (and worse) Wikipedia ripoffs and explained
the problems. None of those have yet been removed.

I didn't go as far as filing a DMCA takedown as none of the earliest
copies were my works, though some of the subsequent ones have been...
but also because of Google's very NPOV phrased threat that your
takedown would be listed at chilling effects and the idiotic PR
debacle that would no doubt result. Kudos to them for providing DMCA
takedown instructions which should result in legally valid takedown
requests though...

If you're a substantial contributor to any of the copied articles and
want to issue a takedown request I'd be glad to give you a hand in
making sure your request is both properly formed, and less likely to
create a storm of stupidity should it show up on chilling effects.