Ed Seehouse wrote:
> Casey Durfee <Casey.Durfee_at_spl.org> wrote:
>
>> Thought experiment: what would happen if Wikipedia decided
>> tomorrow to start
>> charging for access to their site?
>
> They'd probably have the largest class-action suit in history on their
> hands from all the folks who donated gratis the content they were now
> charging for, to get a slice of the action. That and having their hit
> rate approach zero fairly rapidly.
Wikipedia content is offered under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation license. The copyleft provisions of the license prevent
anybody from limiting the rights others have to use or improve the
content and requires that any contributions to that content also be
offered under the same terms.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
That GFDL is essential to protecting the contributions of the
community, but it also opens the data up to wholesale remixing.
Anybody can download all of Wikipedia and put it on an iPod
(individual, non-commercial use), or Robert Bamler could do that and
distribute under the name Encyclopdia (redistribution of a derivative
work). Even Answers.com can republish Wikipedia content commercially
(commercial redistribution of the content). Large scale analysis of
Wikipedia content like the "top books in Wikipedia" lists and other
things we've seen on this list are also made possible and legally
protected by that license.
http://encyclopodia.sourceforge.net/en/
http://www.librarything.com/blog/2007/02/wikipedia-citatons-with-
feed.php
Received on Wed Apr 25 2007 - 12:21:03 EDT