[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

Sat Jun 14 00:54:41 UTC 2008

Agreed, and I think we've come to some of the following conclusions:

1) What Baidupedia is doing is wrong.
2) Because of the Great Firewall, taking down Baidupedia is a net  
negative for us.
2.5) Therefore, we don't want them to be taken down.
3) We want to find a way to bring Baidupedia into compliance with the  
GFDL.
4) We also potentially want to use some of Baidupedia's content for  
ourselves too.
5) Because Baidupedia is a collaborative site instead of a static  
site, it faces different operational and legal implications than other  
cases.

Working from those we can start getting towards an ideal plan of  
action while avoiding the pitfalls of both jumping to decisions, and  
stagnation and inaction.

-Dan

On Jun 13, 2008, at 5:32 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> George Herbert wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>>
>>> I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would  
>>> want to
>>> know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the
>>> fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL
>>> prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly
>>> licensed under the GFDL?"
>>>
>>> Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share-
>>> alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the
>>> original was (and did not agree to license your content under the
>>> GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative
>>> work?
>>>
>>> We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a  
>>> "reverse
>>> Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to
>>> proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is
>>> something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
>>>
>> In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of  
>> the
>> minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original
>> license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license,
>> and likely cannot be held to it.
>>
> Perhaps one of our Chinese speakers can explain just what Baidu claims
> for copyright.  If they purport to retain it for themselves, and deny
> any rights to their own contributors it may be that the rights of  
> those
> contributors are not legally relevant. It strikes me as unlikely that
> they would have any scheme in place that recognizes any rights for  
> their
> contributors.
>
> Dan makes a good point about legal counsel.  A responsible Board  
> member
> needs to give closer scrutiny to legal implications before moving from
> proposal to implementation.  Even then, legal advice is not completely
> binding.  Reading and literally applying statutes in isolation from
> their context can produce bizarre results. Case law and the  
> probability
> of adverse effects also play a role, as does the collective  
> tolerance of
> the Board for what could happen.
>
> In a mailing-list discussion we need to explore all possibilities.  A
> premature determination that something is illegal or won't work closes
> the opportunity to follow that less travelled road that everyone has
> been overlooking.  NPOV discussions are often best resolved by looking
> for that alternative wording that will make both sides happy.
>
> While the moral arguments need to be considered we should not extend
> them to the point of self-righteousness.  For now we don't have a  
> strong
> enough factual framework to derive a meaningful moral conclusion.
>
> Ec
>
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