Re-purposing Dalmatia, Amazon.com and dubious sources Options

[thekohser]

I have to say that this is one of the funniest things I've seen all month, related to free licenses.

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[thekohser]

Looks like SlimVirgin just discovered this scam for the first time. I thought she was a reader and participant here?

Welcome to 2009, Slim!

[Milton Roe]

Looks like SlimVirgin just discovered this scam for the first time. I thought she was a reader and participant here?

Welcome to 2009, Slim!

I don't know what's funnier, the fact that she said "her" FA article was being sold by Amazon for $49, or the fact that Amazon indeed not only does that, but says it's available too on Kindle.

For a couple of years I've pointed out that WMF could actually take the text of all the FA articles (indeed, all the articles on WP, leaving out only stubs and porn for quality not space purposes) and stick it all on one 32 GB micro-SD card. Even 64 GB, which you could put in any cellphone with a STI-MICROSD/64 port. That's GIGA, not megabytes. (No, not in the iPhone, but that's due to Apple and Jobs prejudice against plug-in anything).

So now the palpable irony. The WMF has millions which they could be using to get all print WP, or some selection of all FA articles, pics and all, on microSD for all cell phones, and even Kindle readers themselves (which now cost $150). It isn't happening. Instead, their articles are being scraped one-by-one and sold by Amazon/Kindle for thousands of times the cost. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wacko.gif)

I don't know how long WMF can take this, but I suspect some kind of direct deal with Kindle will be too tempting to pass up. With the profit of course going to the foundation. And then used from there for anybody's wild projects, including the usual ones that benefit Wikia in some clever and non-direct way.

But meanwhile, still no WP on micro-SDs. It's obvious, efficient, could be very cheap, and yet due to market forces, it's not going to happen soon.

Argghhhh.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

[thekohser]

But meanwhile, still no WP on micro-SDs. It's obvious, efficient, could be very cheap, and yet due to market forces, it's not going to happen soon.

Argghhhh.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

Is there anyone selling porn on micro-SDs? If not, then I don't see a market for Wikipedia on micro-SDs, either. If a medium hasn't already been exploited profitably for porn, then that medium is not going to be exploited at all for Wikipedia.

I'm not saying the two are related, of course, but it's sort of like another rule of thumb that I've never had disproved to me:

You will never find an Olive Garden that is not within 3 miles of McDonald's. (And usually, it's less than 1 mile away.) In this case, there actually is a relationship between the two. Darden Restaurants, when selecting potential locations for a new Olive Garden, examines whether or not there is a successful McDonald's franchise nearby. If so, they contend that the market would be able to sustain an Olive Garden, too. They let McDonald's do the dirty work of site selection, in other words.

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[Milton Roe]

But meanwhile, still no WP on micro-SDs. It's obvious, efficient, could be very cheap, and yet due to market forces, it's not going to happen soon.

Argghhhh.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

Is there anyone selling porn on micro-SDs? If not, then I don't see a market for Wikipedia on micro-SDs, either. If a medium hasn't already been exploited profitably for porn, then that medium is not going to be exploited at all for Wikipedia.

And your basis for this reasoning is what? It's happened ONCE with the internet and you generalize from this single case?

There is some text porn on both Kindle and on SD cards, but with SD you need a reader, and portable porn suffers from poor resolution screens (porn is inherrently much more visual than text-based material). So it's not a very natural combination. Whereas, Kindle and text readers works much better for an encyclopedia.

And why would anybody put porn text on an SD anyway? As a business model, it sucks. Wikipedia has never HAD a business model. So your argument falls flat, there. Porn survives on the internet by ads and by serving as a leader to get clients into stuff they DO pay for. Wikipedia can only do a little of that (with Wikia) and it's at the limit, now.

I do wonder what will happen to WP when its donations dry up and it has to pay for itself by commercializing its content. The fact that an organization is non-profit does NOT mean that it can't make any money-- it only puts great constraints on what it use the money FOR. The Red Cross charges people for blood, just as an example. But they can't make any stockholders or owners any money doing that (since there aren't any owners). They have to use it to pay for the services that process the blood. WMF could presumably use license fees to pay for server charges and programmers and office space and Jimbo's expensive wine. Well, on that last one, the COO would probably geek again. But many a non-profit does pay expense accounts of this type, as well as fat salaries.

WP might end up licensing or commercializing its content in some way to keep itself financially afloat in the future. One very obvious way would be a license for a download to a Kindle 4 or whatever, or an SD card containing WP, where some of the cost is some sort of "licence-fee." Right now, Amazon/Kindle uses SD cards and 3G downloads, but they also use a proprietary content format, and they charge on a lot of personal items to convert to that format. They also keep 1/3 to 2/3 (approximate) of the profits on stuff they sell under copyright, splitting the rest with those who control the copyright.* Such a deal could be done with WMF. Again, subject to restrictions on what a 501-c-3 can do with the money it "makes."

* In a famous case, Kindle owners who downloaded Orwell's 1984, then had Kindle electronically erase their copies when it later decided it had no rights to distribute 1984. This was quite Orwellian, a fact which escaped nobody's notice. Lawsuits ensued. Amazon won't do that again.