Copyright Issues Related to Copied Wikipedia Entries or Entries Similar to Other Web Pages
Bill Ives points to a post by Pito Salas about copyright issues related to Wikipedia. I learned a bit about their copyright issues, including an interesting story similar to what Bill writes about, at a Wikipedia meetup I went to this summer.
There are two basic issues: people contributing entries may be plagiarizing other sources and other people may be using Wikipedia’s Web content. Wikipedia has a license allowing others to use its content as long as they give credit to Wikipedia. As we all know, people frequently, uh, borrow words from other sources without citing them properly. Wikipedians take plagiarism within Wikipedia very seriously and have investigated situations where similar content appears on other Web sites.
Some major sites do freely borrow content from Wikipedia through agreements. It seems like someone once told me Free Dictionary was one of those sites, but I can’t clearly recall if that’s the case now.
I gave the link for Bill’s post to a Wikipedian I know in the hopes that he’d write about it, but I haven’t seen a response from him yet.
November 17th, 2004 at 4:42 pm
Freedictionary.com includes, at the bottom of articles in their “Encyclopedia” section, a notice that the content is taken from Wikipedia. I’m not sure of the details, but it’s likely that this can be considered a use of the content compliant with Wikipedia’s license. So in short, chill.
November 17th, 2004 at 5:20 pm
Thanks, Shimon!