[Foundation-l] Evil Book

Mon Nov 1 21:04:56 UTC 2010

As has been rightfully pointed out to me, if these robo-book publishers 
are following the terms of the CC-by-sa licensing (which is doubtful), 
there isn't really anything we can do about it. I just wonder what will 
happen to the online book market once wikipedia robo-books become 50% or 
more of the search results (which is already true in some obscure 
cases). Perhaps Wikipedia will inadvertently cause the demise of Amazon 
and the rebirth of local bookstores.

Ryan Kaldari

On 11/1/10 1:09 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
> It is actually becoming somewhat difficult to search for books on
> obscure subjects on Amazon or Alibris without being completely spammed
> with matches for "robo-books" automatically generated from Wikipedia
> articles. Recently, I was doing research for a Wikipedia article on a
> rather obscure type of spider, and I came very close to buying a book on
> it before I realized that it was actually just a reprint of the content
> I had already written for the article. So I almost paid someone for my
> own writing! Perhaps we should put together a project to keep track of
> these robo-book publishers so that we can start asking for some
> royalties (or else sue them for not giving us proper credit).
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
> On 10/31/10 9:41 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>    
>> There is a book review of a 98 page book supposedly about Ukita
>> K&#333;kichi (who apparently prematurely invented the hang glider)
>>
>> http://blog.seattlepi.com/travelforaircraft/archives/226709.asp
>>
>> Which consists of this Wikipedia article:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukita_K%C5%8Dkichi
>>
>> and a few others
>>
>> Listed on Amazon for 50 bucks:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6131076278/
>>
>> together with a bevy of other sellers:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6131076278/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
>>
>> Fred
>>
>>
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>>      
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