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Plagiarizing Wikipedia For Profit
An anonymous reader sends word of a dustup involving the publisher John Wiley and Sons and Wikipedia. Two pages from a Wiley book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a verbatim copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing. This is the publisher that touched off a fair use brouhaha earlier this year when they threatened to sue a blogger who had reproduced a chart and a table (fully attributed) from one of their journals.
Because GDFL allows copying only if you allow the work to be freely copyable, and release the work it is included in under the GDFL.
If this is the case, then the whole book that this text is in becomes freely copyable, as long as it's source is attributed. If the publisher chooses not to conform to this license, then it becomes in breach of copyright (as the works on Wikipedia are covered by copyright law, they're simply globally available on a license backed up by copyright law).
The Wikipedia link discusses the problem of bringing copyright violation charges. But, even if it is released in the public domain, the problem for the publisher and author is the charge of plagiarism.
Many high-profile authors have been brought down by charges of plagiarism. They have not been sued for copyright violations but they have suffered significant consequences nonetheless. See, for example, the recent case of Kaavya Viswanathan. As such, I would think that the copyright violation angle can be pretty much ignored. It's distracting and weak. The plagiarism charge, however, could have significant consequences.
This is an interesting aspect of free license law that hasn't really been delved into yet.
You're so right! Noone on the wider internet or even slashdot has ever considered this!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This article is tagged "thief". I thought it was standard /. wisdom that copyright infringement isn't theft?
Anyway, are we sure that the text is from Wikipedia, and not both from a third source? It's probably unlikely, but "they copied from Wikipedia" is far from the only explanation.
There are (or were) at least two articles in Wikipedia that are my texts (from my site) with slight variations on sentences. So whoever visits those Wikipedia articles (or did so in the past) and then my pages must come to the conclusion that I stole the stuff from Wikipedia without giving credit. I can't even prove that because I don't have a public version history, and archive.org is spotty when it comes to my site.
In this case (Wiley book) the articles were there way before the book, so the case seems to be clear, but in general, I recommend to keep an open mind about who copied where.
"Hi! It looks like you're trying to steal someone else's intellectual property! Would you like me to a. attribute it properly for you or b. adjust it so your theft isn't so blatantly obvious?"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No, licences do not automatically apply, the *PL and CC* licences are not viral. If I copy your work and disregard the licence, then I have violated your copyright, and you can take me to court. If you released it under a particular licence, then that is pretty much irrelevant to me - if I didn't follow the licence, then I have simply violated your copyright. This author may well have asked a researcher or even a member of his family to come up with a couple of paragraphs about that incident and they copied Wikipedia, it would be unreasonable for the author's entire book to become freely available under the LGPL due to his carelessness in not checking the actions of a third party. A judge might come up with a reasonable compromise, such as ruling that the modified version of the text as appears in the book must be licenced under the LGPL and made available on the publisher's web site for download, and that future printings must credit the Wikipedia article as the source on which the text is based.