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<joshua...@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<renataw...@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://rufftoon.livejournal.com/59337.html >> >> Thanks, >> Renata >> >> P.S. on a happier note: half of Wikipedia editors now can claim to be >> "published authors". >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > > > -- > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
