jimbeetle
msg:4237625 | 10:54 pm on Dec 1, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| At the bottom of a "Shopping Enabled Wikipedia Page," a message explains: "The article appearing above is from Wikipedia...The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version." |
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That's pretty wishy-washy language. Does the "may be available" mean "might be available" or "is available"?
Or am I just in that type of mood today?
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koan
msg:4238239 | 7:28 am on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Hopefully Google won't index those duplicate pages.
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neurodesign
msg:4238282 | 10:47 am on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| Hopefully Google won't index those duplicate pages. |
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Actually, they do : [google.com...]
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johnnie
msg:4238283 | 10:53 am on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
I wonder what would've happened to my domain if I were to scrape Wiki and add my affiliate links to it.
Now is the time to see how biased Google really is.
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Sgt_Kickaxe
msg:4238291 | 11:34 am on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
I think I'll build myself a Wikipedia enabled Amazon.
You don't think Amazon will mind my swiping their entire site do ya?
If this makes Google send more traffic to Amazon and Less to Wikipedia it will surely be "GET YOUR MASHUP ON" season for everyone.
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bateman_ap
msg:4238306 | 12:27 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| Amazon's use of the content is licensed under Creative Commons, the alternative to traditional copyright that Wikipedia uses for all of its user-sourced encyclopedia content. |
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Wiki have made their content usable by others, why all the surprise people make use of it!
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brotherhood of LAN
msg:4238309 | 12:40 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Some of Wiki's images come under different licensing I believe.
I don't see the point of Amazon doing this, a link to the Wiki article would be fine. Facebook are in the same boat...
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ChanandlerBong
msg:4238380 | 4:27 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Great, another 50 million pages of pulp joins the internet. Woot!
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koan
msg:4238427 | 6:43 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| Wiki have made their content usable by others, why all the surprise people make use of it! |
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I think that a big corporation using the work of volunteers to make an extra buck without giving anything back in return is just greedy. When Apple used the Konqueror code for Safari, they gave back to the open source project. Google used the Open directory, but provided some added value with Pagerank and doesn't display ads in their version. If Amazon helped finance Wikipedia with part of the profits, or something, it would be another story.
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frontpage
msg:4238458 | 8:09 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Sounds like Amazon is following the BlackHat SEO path of scrapping content.
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yaix2
msg:4238480 | 9:06 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Its published under CC SA BY for a reason. Its not scraping to take that content, its using it how it was intended to be (re)used.
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flashdash
msg:4238523 | 10:39 pm on Dec 3, 2010 (gmt 0) |
There is an appeal from Wikipedia founder. I think Amazon was answering it by ripping all it pages to outrank competitors during the holiday season.
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Fribble
msg:4238636 | 9:02 am on Dec 4, 2010 (gmt 0) |
I think it's very charitable of Amazon to try and lessen Wikipedia's server load and bandwidth costs. If only all large companies were so altruistic.
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Sgt_Kickaxe
msg:4238786 | 12:12 am on Dec 5, 2010 (gmt 0) |
It's taking content that is just fine where it is and copying it just to monetize it, plain and ugly.
Did Amazon hire a small army to update these pages over time? People sure aren't going to update Amazon copies for them.
Or do they plan to constantly hit up Wikipedia (a free site) with Amazon crawlers and slow it down for all of us...
This move was pure greed in my opinion.
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ChanandlerBong
msg:4239366 | 5:16 pm on Dec 6, 2010 (gmt 0) |
I think wikipedia offers tarball downloads of their whole site on a regular basis. Well, they used to. So amazon should be able to re-update on a daily/weekly basis.
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pmells
msg:4239751 | 4:52 pm on Dec 7, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Nice. Sounds almost like Google's "ENHANCED DOCUMENT BROWSING WITH AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED LINKS TO RELEVANT INFORMATION" patent application.
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pmells
msg:4239755 | 4:56 pm on Dec 7, 2010 (gmt 0) |
Ooops, should have added, that was in principal at least, the idea of monetising from someone else's content. Not exactly an new thing but shady nonetheless.
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graeme_p
msg:4240010 | 8:53 am on Dec 8, 2010 (gmt 0) |
There are other sites that monetise Wikipedia content, some of which rank quite well.
Bing used to have a copy of Wikipedia as well.
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bird
msg:4240045 | 11:33 am on Dec 8, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| Amazon's use of the content is licensed under Creative Commons, the alternative to traditional copyright that Wikipedia uses for all of its user-sourced encyclopedia content. |
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A Creative Commons license is not an "alternative" to traditional copyright, it's a straightforward application thereof. Amazon should have asked a lawyer who actually knows what he's talking about before writing this.
Other than that, Amazon uses those data exactly for their intended purpose, as do probably thousands of other sites out there. They also don't need to "scrape" Wikipedia, they certainly use the official RDF data dump (both for the initial download and hopefully regular updates). This may indeed lessen Wikipedia's server load as Fribble notes.
Also, Wikipedia has no interest at all in "ranking" on Google. Their own site is primarily intended to be used by editors, with other sites using the resulting content for display to the general public. Indeed, the fact that Wikipedia pages *do* rank well for many keywords costs them a lot of money for bandwidth, which they'd really prefer to spend for more productive purposes.
In summary: What Amazon does here is good for Wikipedia in pretty much every aspect. People getting annoyed about it apparently haven't quite grasped yet why the project exists in the first place.
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tictoc
msg:4240291 | 8:35 pm on Dec 8, 2010 (gmt 0) |
I think any site using Wiki content or anyone's copied content should be penalized. This is clearly not only unethical but should be illegal.
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graeme_p
msg:4240468 | 10:20 am on Dec 9, 2010 (gmt 0) |
@tictoc, so you want to ban people from using content under license? That would mean every author would have to print their books themselves (as they cannot license rights to a publisher).
Get this clear: Amazon have Wilipedia and their contributors permission to do this.
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enigma1
msg:4240526 | 1:02 pm on Dec 9, 2010 (gmt 0) |
@tictoc, wikipedia is a different league, has its own cartel in publishing. They publish and censor whatever they want.
Amazon figured out another way to utilize their "published" info.
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bird
msg:4240857 | 7:24 am on Dec 10, 2010 (gmt 0) |
| This is clearly not only unethical but should be illegal. |
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Yes indeed. It should absolutely be illegal to accept and follow the terms of a written contract [en.wikipedia.org ].
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