[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

Thu Jun 12 16:34:43 UTC 2008

2008/6/12 Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net>:

> 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.

There is a lot to be said for this approach. Until we can *ourselves*
distribute this content to Internet users in China, in effect, we're
over a barrel.

If we go to Baidu and demand "credit [Wikipedia authors] or take it
down", what do we do if they say "okay, we'll take it down"? We'd have
shot ourselves in the foot - there's a billion people who no longer
have access to our content, and this is really not something we want
to be doing.

And if they're smart, they'll see this. They'll see that all they need
to do is say "sorry, no", because we'll have to back down; even a
takedown could be enforced, we would be very unlikely to make it
happen.

I say, leave it be until we're in a position to realistically
negotiate with them.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk