Wikipedia Threatens Artists For Fair Use

Hugh Pickens writes "Can a noncommercial website use the trademark of the entity it critiques in its domain name? Surprisingly, it appears that the usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia think not. The EFF reports that Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern have created a noncommercial website at Wikipediaart.org intended to comment on the nature of art and Wikipedia. Since 'Wikipedia' is a trademark owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, the Foundation has demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably or it will attempt to take it by legal force. 'Wikipedia should know better. There is no trademark or cybersquatting issue here,' writes the EFF's Corynne McSherry. 'Moreover, even if US trademark laws somehow reached this noncommercial activity, the artists' use of the mark is an obvious fair use.' It is hard to see what Wikipedia gains by litigating this matter, but easy to see how they lose."

Comments

Re:Apple Art ? Microsoft Art ? Bank of America Art

[bondsbw]

Something more in tune with the Slashdot world: http://www.microsoftsucks.org/, and also: http://applesucks.org/

Mozilla thinks disagrees with EFF's stance

[trifish]

Mozilla thinks the same way as Wikimedia and obviously disagrees with EFF.

From the official Mozilla/Firefox Trademark Policy

Domain Names

If you want to include all or part of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name, you have to receive written permission from Mozilla. People naturally associate domain names with organizations whose names sound similar. Almost any use of a Mozilla trademark in a domain name is likely to confuse consumers, thus running afoul of the overarching requirement that any use of a Mozilla trademark be non-confusing. If you would like to build a Mozilla, Firefox Internet browser or Thunderbird e-mail client promotional site for your region, we encourage you to join an existing official localization project.

Re:Wikipedia Is Rotten

[JoshuaZ]

First of all, to be clear, Wikipedia is not the same as the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation owns the trademark and the servers but has essentially nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the English Wikipedia or any of the other Wikipedias or associated projects.

Much of what you have said is inaccurate or missing context. The primary reasons that Wikipedia looks like such a drama magnet is that a) there's a high degree of transparency so the normal internal jockeying and juvenile behavior is there for all to see b) many people have sincere ideas about what the project should do. People can legitimately and strongly disagree. Wikipedia does have some very serious problems, but one shouldn't overestimate them. The vast majority of editors get along just fine every day just plugging along. I suspect you'd find if you did a survey that even many admins aren't aware of the historical major scandals and drama sources such as the Essjay scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy)

Now, in regard to deletionism, I'm a user who has been labeled as a "hyperinclusionist" on at least one occasion and I think you are being unfair. Deletionism has legitimate arguments behind it. First, having many articles makes it difficult to navigate. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith and then imagine how worse those pages would be if we included every little person. Second, Wikipedia is not intended as a free webhost. Those exist all over the internet. So even a die-hard inclusionist must agree that some inclusion criteria are necessary. Third, the more content we have (especially of obscure topics that few people care about or edit) the more potential for vandalism or insertion of libelous content which is really not good.

I don't have any strong opinion on the issue about the trademark in question (I haven't had time to look at the matter in great detail) but to connect this to alleged problems at Wikipedia is simply not helpful.

Re:Wikipedia Review?

[rjstanford]

Because its obvious that those two websites pertain to Wikipedia, but are not Wikipedia, and as such they're completely legit.

Be honest now. If you see "Wikipedia Art," don't you think that's an Art site owned/run by the folks behind Wikipedia? Is this any different than "BBC Art" or "Encyclopedia Britannica Art"? Yet you'd never make that assumption over "Wikipedia Sucks" or other similar sites... which is why they're different cases.

Re:Open-minded folks at Wikipedia?

[Hurricane78]

Nope. Wikipedia became -- as I perfectly predicted -- a horrible joke of itself.

"Everyone can edit" is dead and gone forever. A ruling class has established. And they are controlling Wikipedia reality and laws now. Getting in gets harder and harder, as more and more entry rules and hierarchy levels get implemented.

I wonder if anyone ever really believed that it would "just work" with giving access to everyone. I mean, sure, we all had a strong wishful thinking syndrome. I quite possibly was one of Wikipedia's strongest defenders. But I soon realize how stupid and ridiculous it really is.
I mean what other community allows anyone to anonymously write whatever he thinks he's right? 4chan. We should have looked at how that turned out.^^

Interestingly (or not so interestingly), it went the same way that every other organizational system goes. The bigger it gets, the more the opinions differ.
But nobody is wrong, because on many many subjects, it is either impossible to determine the physical truth, or the whole thing is just relative to the person, which is a basic law of physics, that is somehow completely ignored at Wikipedia.

My best shot at fixing this, would implement the possibility for an infinite cascading views [like CSS cascading rules are creating the final layout] for one article, and reality-relationship models, where you could choose who to trust on what subjects (also in a cascading manner [again, like CSS rules]).
So I could perhaps choose "Jon Steward" as my basis, extend with some scientists that i know, and add an overlay of what a friend thinks about the politics in his country, to form my view of Wikipedia.

Now this may sound like the reality distortion of Fox. But in reality, you will not change what someone thinks, when he does not trust you. And my method is a software model of this.
And there really are things, where two completely opposite views are rightfully true for both people. Nobody has the right to censor or dominate those views.
And, hell, why not. My philosophy is, that everybody can think whatever he likes to think. As long as he does not hurt me (directly or indirectly [eg. by hurting friends]). No matter how crazy he is. Wouldn't I be the oppressor for not allowing him to think that way? If he's all by himself... so what? Let him be, if he's happy that way. :)

Re:Lock

[spun]

No, it is not simply an action taken by the foundation. It's a classic case of wikidickery. Some unknown artists create a page, call it wikipediart, throw some bullshit self referential art criticism nonsense up on it, and sit back waiting for the shit to hit the fan. They KNOW that wikipedia is chock full of nuts who will come gunning for them and their fake page. THAT is that performance art they were aiming for. So the page gets deleted, as they knew it would, and they set up a site infringing on wikipedia's trademark. They KNOW that the foundation has to protect their trademark, and they will get more free publicity for their 'art.'

These guys aren't artists, they are pretentious tools. Screwing with other people to get some free publicity isn't art. But the fine folks at wikipedia are pretentious tools too, so this whole thing is just a big dick-fight.

Re:Statement by Mike Godwin, General Counsel of WM

[digitig]

So in summary: the EFF accusations are complete BS. And although IANAL, having read the letters posted on the wikipediaart website, it looks to me as if he's right. The Wikipedia foundation has not "demanded that the artists give up the domain name peaceably" and has not threatened to "attempt to take it by legal force". So that's no story, then.