Anything you write may be mercilessly published, A Wikipedia realises too late Options

[Peter Damian]

Here's a nicely packaged book about the Tudor Mary Boleyn, retailing at over £10. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Boleyn-Sister...7726102&sr=8-16

Prominent on the cover is that it is compiled from Wikipedia articles. Causing the Wikipedia editor who wrote them to complain on Jimbo's page. Followed by the reply 'tough'.

Hello, are books like this [10] legally OK? I hate the thought that several publishers are now using my hard work to make money, especially as the books are expensive. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 09:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Legally you can do whatever you want with Wikipedia content (including selling it) as long as you attribute it to the source and licence any modifications to the content under the same terms as the original. Hut 8.5 10:04, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales"
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[lilburne]

Why do none of them know what CC-BY-SA means?

[Peter Damian]

Why do none of them know what CC-BY-SA means?

Franky I never understood it. Here is the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC-BY-SA . Where does it explicitly say that what you write may be used by someone else for commercial purposes?

[LessHorrid vanU]

Why do none of them know what CC-BY-SA means?

Franky I never understood it. Here is the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC-BY-SA . Where does it explicitly say that what you write may be used by someone else for commercial purposes?

Definition d. - "Distribute" means to make available to the public the original and copies of the Work or Adaptation, as appropriate, through sale or other transfer of ownership (my bolding). From Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I would be interested in whether the publishers have tried to copyright "their" book, as the terms of the license does not allow a more onerous restriction that that of CCSA.

[lilburne]

Why do none of them know what CC-BY-SA means?

Franky I never understood it. Here is the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC-BY-SA . Where does it explicitly say that what you write may be used by someone else for commercial purposes?

It has to be pieced to together true, but should you not understand what it is you are doing when you license something. OTOH I did see a bunch of the WP:Commons lot wanting to obscure the issue further by getting flickr to rename their CC-BY-SA button as "License for use on wikipedia".

This post has been edited by lilburne: Sun 26th June 2011, 3:47pm

[NuclearWarfare]

Why do none of them know what CC-BY-SA means?

Franky I never understood it. Here is the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CC-BY-SA . Where does it explicitly say that what you write may be used by someone else for commercial purposes?

It has to be pieced to together true, but should you not understand what it is you are doing when you license something. OTOH I did see a bunch of the WP:Commons lot wanting to obscure the issue further by getting flickr to rename their CC-BY-SA button as "License for use on wikipedia".

Interestingly enough, I don't think that Wikimedia will allow those sort of images except under fair use.

Peter Damian: It's easier to see when you contrast CC-BY-SA-NC to CC-BY-SA. One explicitly forbids commercial use, the other does not.

[Michaeldsuarez]

Peter Damian: It's easier to see when you contrast CC-BY-SA-NC to CC-BY-SA. One explicitly forbids commercial use, the other does not.

Wikipedia won't use CC-BY-SA-NC. Accessibility is one of the main goals of Wikipedia. Mirrors and forks are among the tools used to make information accessible, and they become even more important if Wikipedia ever is blocked, filtered, or taken down. Wikipedia wants its content to be easily redistributed, and I approve ("information wants to be free").

Attaching NC to the license makes it difficult to run a mirror or fork since it's makes it difficult to run ads, and mirrors and forks can't expect to receive to receive the amount of donations Wikipedia receives.

NC would also make it difficult for Wikipedia to run ads if they ever needed to in the future.

The advantages of not using NC outweigh its disadvantages. I'm just happy BY (attribution) is used. SA (Share-alike) also ensures that derivative works contain the same or similar license. There should be a "Do you agree to the terms of our license" checkbox or something in order to avoid confusion.

[lilburne]

Silly, silly, silly. They could simply require a license to create a free encyclopaedia. No need to insist on allowing the cobbling together of third rate books to be sold to the unsuspecting public at exhorbitant prices, nor for media files to be turned into postcards, cafepress wall clocks, and other such tat, none of which they'll get any kudos for anyway.

The NC licenses haven't hindered either the EOL or TOL projects.

[Michaeldsuarez]

The NC licenses haven't hindered either the EOL or TOL projects.

I was saying that it would hinder their forks, not the originals.

[lilburne]

The NC licenses haven't hindered either the EOL or TOL projects.

I was saying that it would hinder their forks, not the originals.

They can cover that aspect in the license too. You can allow for official WP printing, and mirrors, and forks, all so long as the fork/mirror is in accordance with providing a free encyclopaedia. Requiring content creators to license for 3rd party repackaging is not required.

[Kelly Martin]

The entire reason why Wikipedia does not use a "NC" license is so Jimmy and friends can lift content from Wikipedia and move it to Wikia, if it so pleases them to do so, so that they can make money directly off of it. Not using "NC" also means they can run ads if they want, although they've admittedly shown no interest in doing so any time soon.

I suspect most people who contribute to Wikipedia believe that their content will not be used to enrich third parties, and would be fairly annoyed to find out that this is not the case.

[Michaeldsuarez]

They can cover that aspect in the license too. You can allow for official WP printing, and mirrors, and forks, all so long as the fork/mirror is in accordance with providing a free encyclopaedia. Requiring content creators to license for 3rd party repackaging is not required.

What if you only wish to mirror / archive a single webpage (eg. WebCitation)? That doesn't fulfill the requirement of providing a free encyclopedia.

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Sun 26th June 2011, 9:09pm

[Malleus]

The entire reason why Wikipedia does not use a "NC" license is so Jimmy and friends can lift content from Wikipedia and move it to Wikia, if it so pleases them to do so, so that they can make money directly off of it. Not using "NC" also means they can run ads if they want, although they've admittedly shown no interest in doing so any time soon.

I suspect most people who contribute to Wikipedia believe that their content will not be used to enrich third parties, and would be fairly annoyed to find out that this is not the case.

I doubt that's true, given the recent plethora of over-priced print on demand books on Amazon that are simply reprints of Wikipedia articles.

[Kelly Martin]

I suspect most people who contribute to Wikipedia believe that their content will not be used to enrich third parties, and would be fairly annoyed to find out that this is not the case.

I doubt that's true, given the recent plethora of over-priced print on demand books on Amazon that are simply reprints of Wikipedia articles.

I suspect you'll find that not many Wikipedians are aware of these books, and of those who are, not a small number are likely annoyed about them. I know I've seen Wikipedians complaining about them.

[Malleus]

I suspect most people who contribute to Wikipedia believe that their content will not be used to enrich third parties, and would be fairly annoyed to find out that this is not the case.

I doubt that's true, given the recent plethora of over-priced print on demand books on Amazon that are simply reprints of Wikipedia articles.

I suspect you'll find that not many Wikipedians are aware of these books, and of those who are, not a small number are likely annoyed about them. I know I've seen Wikipedians complaining about them.

I've complained about them myself, and as you say, I've seen others complain about them as well. But not so much that they enrich any third-party but that they are vastly over-priced. A fair profit for the cost of production, given the purchaser knows that the exact same content is available online for free and has nevertheless chosen to buy a paper copy, well, where's the harm in that? Caveat emptor.

This post has been edited by Malleus: Sun 26th June 2011, 9:42pm

[lilburne]

They can cover that aspect in the license too. You can allow for official WP printing, and mirrors, and forks, all so long as the fork/mirror is in accordance with providing a free encyclopaedia. Requiring content creators to license for 3rd party repackaging is not required.

What if you only wish to mirror / archive a single webpage (eg. WebCitation)? That doesn't fulfill the requirement of providing a free encyclopedia.

Most uses of webcitation will general fall into the category of non-commercial.

Kelly is most likely correct that in the early days they thought they might be something like a linux distro making mucho mullah off the work of kids.

[EricBarbour]

CC by SA by NC, my A-S-S.

Licenses and legalese mean very little once you cross a national border. And since WP wants to be the trans-national "encyclopediapseudothing", those finely devised Creative Commons license terms will be worth less than the hard-drive space they occupy.

I already predicted that people will inevitably start stealing Wikipedia content and republishing it for profit. Every time I said that before, people pooh-poohed, because of the "magic of Creative Commons". Or that it "would not be profitable" to print all that "content" on dead trees. If you can find the person(s) who put out that book, feel free to ask if the book is making any money or not.

I suspect Kelly is right about there not being a commerce clause in the "official" license, for the simple reason that Wales wants to steal the content himself!

Only thing I can add: you will see more books like this in the future.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Sun 26th June 2011, 10:35pm

[Malleus]

CC by SA by NC, my A-S-S.

Licenses and legalese mean very little once you cross a national border. And since WP wants to be the trans-national "encyclopediapseudothing", those finely devised Creative Commons license terms will be worth less than the hard-drive space they occupy.

I already predicted that people will inevitably start stealing Wikipedia content and republishing it for profit. Every time I said that before, people pooh-poohed, because of the "magic of Creative Commons". Or that it "would not be profitable" to print all that "content" on dead trees. If you can find the person(s) who put out that book, feel free to ask if the book is making any money or not.

I suspect Kelly is right about there not being a commerce clause in the "official" license, for the simple reason that Wales wants to steal the content himself!

Only thing I can add: you will see more books like this in the future.

You're absolutely right of course. But there's no real value in a collection of freely available encyclopedia articles in paper form; the value is in the detailed work that focuses on one or two of them, which isn't freely available and editors can potentially profit from, through the Wikipedia link.

This post has been edited by Malleus: Sun 26th June 2011, 10:58pm

[radek]

I suspect most people who contribute to Wikipedia believe that their content will not be used to enrich third parties, and would be fairly annoyed to find out that this is not the case.

I doubt that's true, given the recent plethora of over-priced print on demand books on Amazon that are simply reprints of Wikipedia articles.

I suspect you'll find that not many Wikipedians are aware of these books, and of those who are, not a small number are likely annoyed about them. I know I've seen Wikipedians complaining about them.

I've complained about them myself, and as you say, I've seen others complain about them as well. But not so much that they enrich any third-party but that they are vastly over-priced. A fair profit for the cost of production, given the purchaser knows that the exact same content is available online for free and has nevertheless chosen to buy a paper copy, well, where's the harm in that? Caveat emptor.

Exactly. It's supply AND demand, not supply OR demand. Just because they're for sale doesn't mean anyone's buying them.

Anyway, this is basically like giving money to homeless bums. Once you write a Wikipedia article it has ceased to be yours, just like when you give a money to a bum the fact that he may spend it on cheap wine is none of your business.

I seriously doubt that anyone anywhere is getting rich off of this. In fact, if Wikipedia quality is as low as we generally say it is around these parts (and, on average, it probably is), then there's really no profit to be made here (or as Malleus says, caveat emptor), and that's ON TOP of the fact that the same shitty content is available for free.

[Text]

YouTube has recently added a dropbox where CC-BY-SA can be selected for every video uploaded by a user, additionally to the "Standard YouTube Copyright". Lawsuit galore!