[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

Thu Jun 12 15:56:13 UTC 2008

I disagree. Under our licenses, we require attribution for content. If
someone else takes my content and uses it without attribution, they are
saying it is theirs. That is theft. They have taken my intellectual
property, and claimed it as their own. That's entirely different than the
RIAA line, which says "If you download copyrighted music without paying,
that's theft". There is a HUGE difference between sharing copyrighted
content inappropriately, and claiming ownership and authorship of that
content. The latter is 100% unacceptable; the former at least has moral
arguments against it. I certainly am not a drinker of the RIAA kool-aid, nor
am I trying to equate it to criminal acts like larceny and the like.  I am
trying to put it into perspective however; it's not something we should be
condoning or supporting. That's one of the benefits of having free content
-- to minimize the instances of copyright infringement. It's hard to
infringe on free content -- you have to actively try. So those who DO
actively go out of their way to take credit for what our contributors have
made, ought to be viewed in a stricter light precisely because of the
freedom of our content.

-Dan

On 6/12/08, Brian McNeil <brian.mcneil at wikinewsie.org> wrote:
>
> This is a tired old canard.
>
> Copyright infringement is *NOT* theft.
>
> When you infringe someone's copyright you have duplicated what they have,
> not taken it away from them.
>
> For this very reason, the law views the two offences differently. If you
> equate copyright infringement with theft, you've been drinking the RIAA
> kool-aid.
>
>
> Brian McNeil
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Dan
> Rosenthal
> Sent: 12 June 2008 15:19
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections
>
> On 6/12/08, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > Titan Deng wrote:
> > > We Chinese Wikipedians are now collecting Baidupedia articles which
> were
> > > copied from Chinese Wikipedia.
> >
> > What is all that copyright, lawyer, enforcement, loose face stuff about?
> >
> > Last time I checked, Wikipedia was about disseminating free knowledge.
> > Unfortunately the projects are blocked by the Chinese government, so
> > people of the peoples republic have no access to our content, not the
> > the parts that are deemed dangerous by the government, not to the other
> > parts. Now someone takes at least some of the uncontroversial content
> > and makes it available by copying into Baidu.
> >
> > Of course it would be nice if they would acknowledge the license and
> > give proper attribution. But they can't - Wikipedia is banned and they
> > can't name this source.
> >
> > But as our mission is to distribute our knowledge, I believe this is the
> > second best way to distribute our articles, and the best available until
> > the forces that are open up the Great Firewall.
> >
> > Ciao Henning [[user:h-stt]]
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> Free knowledge does not mean that the information itself is unrestricted,
> nor does it mean that the authors who make information free waive all of
> their rights. We fundamentally require attribution to our authors under our
> license. If Baidupedia is not respecting that, and are not in
> compliance with the other terms of the GFDL, then it is very difficult to
> say that they are working for the freedom of knowledge. Copyright
> infringement != free knowledge. It == theft. By enforcing that other
> websites respect the terms of the licenses our works are published under,
> we
> are actually furthering free knowledge by giving our contributors some
> assurances that their work will be protected and not abused. I know that I,
> for one, would have second thoughts about some of my contributions if I
> knew
> that it would be taken by another person and used under their name. That's
> not free dissemination, its theft.
>
> -Dan
>
> --
> Dan Rosenthal
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-- 
Dan Rosenthal