[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

Thu Jun 12 17:39:55 UTC 2008

2008/6/13 Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com>:

> 2008/6/12 Titan Deng <theodoranian at gmail.com>:
>
> > No, it's not true. If you can read the list (the link I gave), those
> > articles are not controversial articles, not sensitive to the Chinese
> > government at all. Baidupedia has political censorship, and their staff
> > review and filter all materials which might be regarded as sensitive to
> > Chinese government.
>
> I think this is a miscommunication - that is Henning's point. The
> articles Baidu reuses are the politically unimportant ones, ones which
> wouldn't need any censorship. As matters stand, Wikipedia can't get
> these articles out into China; the firewall blocks the zh.wp articles
> on Tiananmen Square and on cosmology without caring what's in them.
>
> As a result, Baidu's copying of them means that people in China can at
> least get *some* of our content, rather than none at all.
>

By the way, Chinese Wikipedia is not only contributed by mainland Chinese
users. Most of new articles are written by Taiwanese and Hong Kong
Wikipedians.
This time the issue is brought up due to a complaint from a Taiwanese
Wikipedian who is a main author of a featured article which has been copied
to Baidu for months.
In Wikimania 2007 press conference, Florence mentioned Baidu's copyright
infringement. Several days later Baidu had an official response stating that
Wikimedia's accusation unreasonable, because their policy prohibits copyvio
materials.
(
http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/big5/news.xinhuanet.com/internet/2007-08/07/content_6486399.htm
)
Baidu is a very bad example which might imply that other Chinese website
could use Wikimedian contents without following GFDL.

>
> >> 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.
> >>
> > The ban is not relative to their copyright violation. Wikipedia is not
> > prohibited to mention. The Great Fire Wall blocks the website with its
> url (
> > wikipedia.org).
> > At least, according to GFDL, they can still mention 5 main authors
> instead
> > of mentioning Wikipedia.
>
> Mmm... this may work. Finding five main authors is so tricky that we
> usually recommend a link to the wp history page, though - and a link
> to a blocked site is pretty useless in terms of actually giving
> attribution!
>

I think legally speaking it's not our responsibility to find ways for them
to give attribution to the authors.  It is not reasonable they use those
articles and at the same time they need us to provide legal ways to them.
Just too over.

Titan

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