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Does Amazon Owe Wikipedia For Taking Advantage of The Free Labor of Their Volunteers? (slate.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the nothing-is-free dept.

Slate's Rachel Withers argues that "tech companies that profit from Wikipedia's extensive database owe Wikimedia a much greater debt." Amazon's Alexa, for example, uses Wikipedia "without credit, contribution, or compensation." The Google Assistant also sources Wikipedia, but they credit the encyclopedia -- and other sites -- when it uses it as a resource. From the report: Amazon recently donated $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment, a fund that keeps Wikipedia running, as "part of Amazon's and CEO Jeff Bezos' growing work in philanthropy," according to CNET. It's being framed as a "gift," one that -- as Amazon puts it -- recognizes their shared vision to "make it easier to share knowledge globally." Obviously, and as alluded to by CNET, $1 million is hardly a magnanimous donation from Amazon and Bezos, the former a trillion-dollar company and the latter a man with a net worth of more than $160 billion. But it's not just the fact that this donation is, in the scheme of things, paltry. It's that this "endowment" is dwarfed by what Amazon and its ilk get out of Wikipedia -- figuratively and literally. Wikipedia provides the intelligence behind many of Alexa's most useful skills, its answers to everything from "What is Wikipedia?" to "What is Slate?" (meta).

Amazon's know-it-all Alexa is renowned for its ability to answer questions, but Amazon didn't compile all that data itself; according to the Amazon developer forum, "Alexa gets her information from a variety of trusted sources such as IMDb, Accuweather, Yelp, Answers.com, Wikipedia and many others." Nor did it pay those who did: While Amazon customers pay at least $39.99 for an Echo device (and the pleasure of asking Alexa questions), Alexa freely pulls this information from the internet, leeching off the hard work performed by Wikipedia's devoted volunteers (and unlike high school students, it doesn't even bother to change a few words around). It's hardly noble for Amazon to support Wikipedia, considering how much Alexa uses its services, nor is it particularly selfless to fund the encyclopedia when it relies upon its peer-reviewed accuracy; ultimately, helping Wikipedia helps Amazon, too. [...] We all benefit from Wikipedia, but arguably no one more than the smart speakers, for which the internet's encyclopedia is a valuable and value-adding resource. It's frankly a little exploitative how little they give back. Withers goes on to note that Wikipedia seeks donations from its users -- it's a non-profit that runs entirely on donations from the general public. While one can argue that "Amazon is only packing up information that we ourselves leech for free all the time, [...] Alexa is also diverting people away from visitng Wikipedia pages, where they might noticed a little request for a donation, or from realizing they are using Wikipedia's resources at all," Withers writes.

A report from TechCrunch earlier this year pointed out that Amazon is the only one of the big tech players not found on Wikimedia's 2017-2018 corporate donor list -- one that includes Apple, Google, and even Amazon's Seattle-based sibling Microsoft, all of which matched employee donations to the tune of $50,000.

18 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. No. by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What an incredibly stupid idea.

    Donating to Wikipedia is fine, but at the end of the day their a charity making a public resource. Are we running out of things to criticize Amazon for now that they've been shamed into paying living wages?

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:No. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

      Are we running out of things to criticize Amazon for now that they've been shamed into paying living wages?

      Well, if we want to close the loop, we could criticize them for contributing to wage inflation.

    2. Re:No. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that Wikipedia uses they are legally obliged to give attribution. So it appears that they are at the very least in breech of that licence, leaving aside any moral arguments about contributing to a resource that is absolutely vital to the performance of their highly profitable product.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. No! by Arzaboa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't that one of the points of the internet... to share knowledge?

    --
    I can't accept this! - Monica Swinton, A.I.

  3. No by registrations_suck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.

    Wikipedia makes itself available as a free service. If it wants to GET PAID for its use, it needs to update its TOS appropriately, and start charging as it sees fit.

  4. Hosting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about Amazon just save the donation, and instead host all of wiki (media, commons, and others) all free of charge on AWS. This cost Amazon less, and greatly reduces cost for the foundation.. win-win. Though, personally, I'd argue the site should be mirrored at least across the three largest cloud providers to keep it up at all times.

    1. Re:Hosting by mysidia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hosting and the technical operation is such a SMALL percentage of the Wikimedia foundation's $76 Million in annual operating expenses: it's kind of ridiculous.

      They would still complain that Amazon's contribution is paltry.

      Consider this though: The people contributing FREE LABOR to build the encyclopedia are not getting paid by the foundation, BUT the foundation has many hired staff and buildings.... so the donations are going to pay people, But the people who develop the software and write the articles on the encyclopedia are largely unpaid volunteers ---- Meanwhile the WM foundation spends more than $6 million on administrative employees, close to a $1 million each on a bunch of different categories like "branding and brand identity, community health, etc"

      In short.... they seem like a sprawling non-profit that has a disproportionately large and disproportionately expensive operation leeching off the public good done by unpaid volunteers to provide personal salaries for an entity that serves itself and uses donations to grow itself and pay administrative overheads to people that own itself, whereas an organization of 10% of its size would be more than adequate to support the technical infrastructure and systems that the unpaid volunteers doing 99% of the real work require for all languages of the global free encyclopedia to exist.

    2. Re:Hosting by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In short.... they seem like a sprawling non-profit that has a disproportionately large and disproportionately expensive operation leeching off the public good done by unpaid volunteers to provide personal salaries for an entity that serves itself and uses donations to grow itself and pay administrative overheads to people that own itself, whereas an organization of 10% of its size would be more than adequate to support the technical infrastructure and systems that the unpaid volunteers doing 99% of the real work require for all languages of the global free encyclopedia to exist.

      I have noticed that an awful lot of people underestimate the complexity of large operations especially when the end goal seems simple. Running something with the size and reach of wikipedia is not simple.

      You probably think "it's just a website" and you could host it. You couldn't.

      https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik...

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  5. Commercial use is allowed by Arnold+Reinhold · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Amazon doesn't owe Wikipedia contributors anything. Contributions to Wikipedia are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licensed, under which "You are free: to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to Remix—to adapt the work, for any purpose, even commercially." You still have to attribute the work and license your modifications under similar terms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License) Contributors agree to this license when they click "Publish changes." So maybe Amazon needs to do a better job of attribution, and million dollar gifts are always appreciated, but that about it.

  6. Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day? by brian.stinar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This question makes no sense. Why would someone owe for free things, which there is no contract/terms-of-service/financial agreement?

    Today must be a slow news day....

    1. Re:Any Contract? No...? Then, No. Slow News Day? by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If Wikipedia is truly a non-profit, then the contributions it gains above and beyond its normal revenue stream should produce a trust that if managed correctly will cover its expenses.

      A million here and a million there by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc... as well as governments and such is very generous. I'm quite sure Amazon would also be very happy to contribute hosting, bandwidth, counter-DDoS, etc...

      A major part of running a non-profit is long term ambitions. In other words, it's in the interest of the organization and the world as a whole to continuously improve wikipedia over the next 100+ years. As such, if each year Amazon and others contribute to them allowing their reserves to grow at a rate faster than inflation, then Wiki over time could be entirely self-sufficient to the point that they offer scholarships and more.

      People are missing that you don't want to get a $50 million payment today if you can instead get $500 million over the next 100 years from Amazon or whoever beats them out. Also, graciously accepting the handout and spending some time publicizing how grateful you are for it would attract other businesses who would like to be seen as positive contributors to the organization.

      Wikipedia is not a business, it's an organization. So long as this is true, it should operate as one.

  7. It's right in TFS by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Amazon's Alexa, for example, uses Wikipedia "without credit, contribution, or compensation."

    Amazon recently donated $1 million to the Wikimedia Endowment, a fund that keeps Wikipedia running

  8. Just Imagine... by Luthair · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What they must owe the Linux foundation following this hare brained logic.

  9. Re:No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So....credit the source.

    That is a well-established practice, even when dealing with freely-available information.

    Amazon owes that to Wikipedia, socially if not legally.

  10. Re:Yes. Same as GPL license by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sure no problem. Just change the liscene terms of Wikipedia to no commercial use unless ....

    They can not retroactively change the license. I contributed many articles and edits to Wikipedia, and I absolutely would NOT agree to "no commercial use". I contributed so that anyone can use it for any purpose, and Wikipedia has no right to change that just because they feel greedy.

  11. Re: No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly what I thought. I know she probably isn't nerdly or old enough to read Slashdot, but:

    Rachel, that attitude is scummy as fuck. The word "volunteer" means a person who freely and willingly gives their time. They don't want compensation, they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that's the whole fucking point. Saying "Amazon Owes Wikipedia Big-Time" is no different than saying "Wikipedia Owes Volunteers Big-Time". If you only do things for pay, then don't volunteer to do things, you entitled little millennial shit.

    By the way, how much are you compensating all of the open source developers for being on the internet or using smartphones and mobile devices for commercial purposes? Don't you owe them "big time" too?

  12. Re:No by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Funny

    No one owes Wikipedia anything for using it.
    In what fucked up society did you grow up that you don't owe the courtesy of indicating who you quote?

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  13. Re: No by tinkerton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is truth in that but I think you don't hear much about special interest groups on wikipedia because they won. I followed the Philip Cross case ( https://wikipedia.fivefilters.... ). The people who challenged Cross got exactly the treatment you're dealing out and it was very hard to prevail. The professionalization of Wikipedia always carries a danger. The complex rules allow people with clout to drown out those without. Not in principle, but in practice. People who want to want to take on subjects where big interests are involved quickly find out that it's very hard, especially when the big interests also manage to get their narrative into the reputable sources. And those who disagree, well, they're not reputable.