Hi everybody,
as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
wikipedia articles.
The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
publicly announced.
I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
content for sale"
(http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
* on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
* below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
original wikipedia article is shown
* all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if possible
* pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
since we use the wikipedia dumps
* we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to the
Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our service
Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
building pediapress.
Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
post their opinions.
Volker Haas
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
wikipedia articles.
The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
publicly announced.
I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
content for sale"
(http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
* on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
* below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
original wikipedia article is shown
* all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if possible
* pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
since we use the wikipedia dumps
* we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to the
Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our service
Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
building pediapress.
Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
post their opinions.
Volker Haas
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
