[Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copy&pasted books from Wikipedia

Fri Aug 14 00:14:53 UTC 2009

That was kinda my point.
They "deceive" potential buyers into thinking it's an original book/content
without disclosing that it's just a copy from Wikipedia. There are
disclaimers inside the book -- but that comes only after opening the wallet.
Someone should put it up front.

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:56 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would be exceedingly uncomfortable with us organizing a negative
> campaign against any publisher not actually violating our copyright.
> .  A factual campaign, providing information is another matter. It
> would be entirely appropriate for individuals, even in a somewhat
> coordinated way, to add a review, just pointing out that it is
> entirely a copy of a Wikipedia article, and available free in  an
> updated version from our website--and in updated form.
>
>
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Joshua Gay<joshuagay at gmail.com> wrote:
> > When I worked for the FSF I helped to run a campaign against the
> > Amazon Kindle (and, DRM in general). We did an action called "The
> > Kindle Swindle" in which we asked people to tag all DRM ebooks and the
> > kindle itself with the tags "kindle swindle" and "DRM".
> >
> > People went ahead and tagged close to a thousand products with the
> > term "Kindle Swindle" and the Kindle advice was tagged with that
> > phrase close to 400 times making it become one of the top four tags on
> > the Kindle page.
> >
> > What is kind of neat is that for each tag-term has its own discussion
> > forum. The "Kindle Swindle" tag has a relatively active set of
> > discussion threads [1], and the original comment I wrote [2] has over
> > 250 replies to it.
> >
> > I imagine some combination of blogging, tagging, and letter writing
> > could help in some way to increase consumer awareness and this kind of
> > work can be done in a distributed fashion by wikimedians worldwide.
> >
> > footnotes
> > :[1] http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle%20swindle?ref_=tag_dpp_cust_itdp_t
> > :[2]
> http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle%20swindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx9U9IIOS8R4U3&cdThread=TxEMQ1LM199AP8&displayType=tagsDetail
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Renata St<renatawiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> It was raised before on the Village Pump, but I think this is so
> disturbing
> >> that we ought to do something.
> >>
> >> "Alphascript Publishing" has published over 1900 (and counting) books,
> all
> >> available on Amazon. Prices range from $31 to $179. All of these books
> are
> >> simple computer-generated copies from Wikipedia and (at least according
> to
> >> one Amazon reviewer) couple other public domain websites. Trouble is,
> from
> >> book description page there is absolutely no way of knowing that the
> book is
> >> a Wikipedia mirror on paper. At least several Amazon buyers have been
> >> fooled. What really gets my blood boiling is that Amazon user "VDM
> Verlag
> >> Dr.Müller" (I think someone exposed him as 100% shareholder of the
> >> publishing co) goes on rating these products as "five star"....
> >>
> >> The publisher seems to observe the copyright (even includes full edit
> >> history) so legal action seems impossible. Someone already contacted
> Amazon,
> >> but they "are not responsible for the quality of books sold". In the
> >> meantime the number of such books grew from 900 in June to almost 2000
> as of
> >> today... I think we should do something. At the very least publishing
> >> product reviews warning that what this is....
> >>
> >> See:
> >>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript_Publishing_sells_free_articles_as_expensive_books
> >>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_20#The_Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia_book_hoax<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Archive_20#The_Alphascript-Amazon-Wikipedia_book_hoax>
> >> http://rufftoon.livejournal.com/59337.html
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Renata
> >>
> >> P.S. on a happier note: half of Wikipedia editors now can claim to be
> >> "published authors".
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > I am running the Arizona Rock'n'Roll marathon with Team in Training.
> > Help me reach my fundraising goals:
> > http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/pfchangs10/joshuagay
> >
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