Wikipedia's Content Ripped Off More Egregiously Than Usual 284
Ultraexactzz writes "Wikipedia's content is licensed under the GFDL, which permits such content to be copied with attribution — and Wikipedia is used to its content being copied and mirrored. However, a new website at e-wikipedia.net appears to have taken this a step further by mirroring the entire English Wikipedia — articles, logos, disclaimers, userpages, and all. Compare Wikipedia's About page with e-wikipedia.net's. The site even adds to Wikipedia's normally ad-free interface by including text ads." Just try logging in or actually editing an article, though, and you'll get the message "The requested URL /w/index.php was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." If there's credit here, I don't see it — sure looks like it's intentionally misleading readers.
It's no sin (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is perfect! (Score:2, Informative)
I just don't understand why anybody would ever cite an encyclopedia. Unless they were studying encyclopedias, of course. It is about as useful as citing a dictionary.
Re:It's no sin (Score:5, Informative)
E-wikipedia.net uses the Wikipedia logo, which would require the explicit permission of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Started a new article... (Score:3, Informative)
I was already logged into Wikipedia. I went to e-wiki, and did a search for itself. I decided I'd have some fun and create the article. I clicked to create it, and it brought me over to en.wikipedia.org to create it.
Very interesting. Not even -trying- for original content.
There are hundreds/thousands of such sites (Score:3, Informative)
While I notice it hasn't in this case, google is normally pretty quick to remove them from its indexes as well, so if you use google, you'll mostly not be able to find them.
However, the basic meme of copy content, add ads and publish, particularly for content like wikipedia that is self-referential, is very widely used.
--Q
It appears to be permitted (Score:5, Informative)
"2. Verbatim Copying [] You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License."
The pages do appear to be verbatim copies of the Wikipedia pages, despite the lack of some images (note: verbatim - in precisely the same words used by a writer or speaker). You'll also note that the license does not require attribution (found in other words in Section 4), just a requirement for reproduction. Wikipedia is the one that must resolve its failure to include a copyright notice on the pages, not the mirror.
WHOIS information (Score:5, Informative)
Registration Service Provided By: NameCheap.com
Contact: support@NameCheap.com
Visit: http://www.namecheap.com/
Domain name: e-wikipedia.net
Registrant Contact:
-
John Heys (allegro.share2@o2.pl)
+46.0851041152
Fax: +1.5555555555
Virkesvagen 5
Stockholm, n/a 12030
SE
Administrative Contact:
-
John Heys (allegro.share2@o2.pl)
+46.0851041152
Fax: +1.5555555555
Virkesvagen 5
Stockholm, n/a 12030
SE
Technical Contact:
-
John Heys (allegro.share2@o2.pl)
+46.0851041152
Fax: +1.5555555555
Virkesvagen 5
Stockholm, n/a 12030
SE
Status: Locked
Name Servers:
ns1.hostpower.pl
ns2.hostpower.pl
Creation date: 28 Feb 2008 20:23:45
Expiration date: 28 Feb 2009 20:23:45
---
Other domains hosted at that IP:
Strzelecki.info
E-teledyski.org
Giexx.com
Moderowany.net
Songstexts.info
Tibianews.info
Wartibia.com
Wikipedia2009.com
Axeee.com
I'll spare everyone the WHOIS data for all of those domains as well - look it up on your own.
Re:S[cp]ammer alert? (Score:4, Informative)
This request has been identified as coming from a remote-loading website. This is not Wikipedia, please update your bookmarks. Access Wikipedia only through *.wikipedia.org.
A remote loader is a website that loads content from another site on each request. The content is typically filtered, framed with ads, and then displayed to the user.
The remote loader either:
* Pretends to be the source website, perhaps using a deceptive domain name; or
* Converts all instances of the name of the source website to some other name.
We consider remote loading websites to be an unfair drain on our server resources, and so they are systematically blocked, as this one has been.
Remote Loading/Leeching (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, this is a stupid way to design it, since it's trivial for Wikipedia to detect what you're doing, and serve a custom error page, as they have done. In short, why did these people assume Wikipedia was going to let them continue infringing their trademark and taxing their servers?
Aaaand it's over (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It appears to be permitted (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Informative)
In MAJOR articles like those on neuroscience, biology, core computer science, mathematics, etc, Wikipedia tends to contain fewer inaccuracies per text unit than Britannica. Britannica is researched by a single person or closed group, leading to a lack of distributed peer review by experts in any field other than scholarly pursuit.
In other words, well-written Wikipedia articles have fewer probable (statistics) factual inaccuracies than your typical formal encyclopedia article. Small, uninteresting, or poorly written Wikipedia articles probably have errors, and are of a quality that wouldn't make it into a formal encyclopedia.
Re:It appears to be permitted (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Aaaand it's over (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I guess we can (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Aaaand it's over (Score:4, Informative)
Last I checked: they blocked anonymous editing from open proxies. They never blocked reading the Wikipedia from open proxies.
They even potentially allowed edits from open proxies if you had an account (or if you had an account and the username you logged in as was whitelisted).
Re:This is perfect! (Score:5, Informative)
It's of course a biosphere, just like the economy and government. It naturally converges on an optimal condition, that being that it contains correct information. Britannica can't (it's micro-managed and thus sub-optimal), and scientific review articles are forcibly peer reviewed once (it's micro-managed and thus sub-optimal, but with a much better starting point). The interesting thing about the latter two is that over time they will "become" wrong, i.e. as new scientific discoveries disprove their content; the former, however, will stay "wrong" for a shorter time period.
None of these are perfect. Wikipedia is possibly better than Britannica, worse initially than a peer-reviewed scientific paper (though the data gets incorporated into Wikipedia quickly, with reference), and far better than the Google results many students use on their research assignments (hosted on free Web sites, etc)... though some of those aren't bad either, see http://www.freewebs.com/valvewizard/ [freewebs.com] (I've even seen Usenet discussions used in FORMAL compsci papers, usually quoting Gutmann).
Re:This is perfect! (Score:3, Informative)
Er, his point was that an encyclopedia is by definition a secondary source [wikipedia.org], and Wikipedia has policies that are meant to enforce this. When it comes to good research, as has been pointed out above and elsewhere in this discussion, primary sources are preferred for a bunch of reasons (creeping mis-/re-interpretation, citation wild goose chases, etc). Frankly, it doesn't matter how good an article on Wiki is, it should always point you to the primary source which you can read and cite.
OED (Score:3, Informative)
Eh, I think the OED is the de facto dictionary for non-law research.
I think it depends on which edition, one of the paperback editions like the Essential or American editions or the full 20something volume edition. I got my spelling of time as "tyme" from the full edition.
FalconRe:Interlibrary loan latency; standard dictionarie (Score:4, Informative)
And definitive use in the law, as well. Merriam-Webster is not a particularly accurate, thorough, or disciplined publication. It's fine as a casual reference, but so is Dictionary.com, American Heritage, and Webster's (the REAL Webster's).
The OED is the English language resource, at least in terms of the high water mark for scholarship. It is that disciplined scholarship that leads to its criticism, however. Precise word choice, where it is important, should not be blunted by an overly populist dictionary with demonstrably lower levels of academic scholarship and fidelity.
If the term has become such a point of contention that the precise dictionary definition is required, then OED is the ultimate arbiter. If you're not squabbling over technicalities and just want the basic gist, then any of the other reputable dictionaries, including M-W, are acceptable. Stopping at M-W, on the other hand, is like saying an encyclopedia is a sufficient technical resource. Encyclopedias and dictionaries are by their nature limited. The OED is unquestionably the most detailed English dictionary, and no other resource can make a contrary claim with any real credibility. That's what makes it valuable in academic, technical, and legal research.
Re:What!? (Score:3, Informative)
And live feeds are in fact a service the WMF sells. Because they cost!