[Foundation-l] svwikis evil twin, Metapedia

[Lennart Guldbrandsson]

Hello,

(I´m new to this emaillist so please forgive any mistakes I make.)

I´m the press contact for the Swedish Wikipedia (
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal). Recently I was
contacted by a journalist who pointed out a fairly new wiki called
Metapedia, at http://www.metapedia.se, which was founded by a known racist
and leader of a small nationalistic (and antidemocratic) party in Sweden (I
can give several newspaper articles to back up that claim.). I checked it
out and discovered several things:

1. It used MediaWiki and thus look *very* similiar to Wikipedia. Even their
logo is in the same colour range. One could easily mistake one for the
other. This is one spinoff effect of the free MediaWiki, and probably one we
will see again. But the site uses the same phrases as svwiki, such as
Läsvärd artikel (featured article) and so on.

2. It has around 1300 articles, but the majority is about either a) people
connected to nazism, holocaust denial or critics of the Jewish conspiracy
(and their works), or b) their opponents, often citing them as Jewish or any
other race they might belong to, see for example
http://www.metapedia.se/index.php?title=Ernst_Klein&oldid=9247. They do not
appear to have any NPOV policy, and indeed claim to be a "metapolitical"
encyclopedia. A quote from their users' portal instead urges writers to
"make an effort to use an unbiased and low-key language. To avoid powerful
words and hard points of view is critical for being credible. Look at other
encyclopidias to get an idea how the texts should look stylistically" (My
translation of
http://www.metapedia.se/index.php?title=Metapedia:Deltagarportalen) This
seems to indicate that the appearence of NPOV is more important than actual
NPOV.

3. Their articles are often copied and edited versions of the svwiki
counterparts, with apparent POV-slant in their favour. But they have been
very careful not to give their game away. Their article on Hitler for
example is very short: ("Adolf Hitler, born April 20th 1889, deceased April
30th 1945. Known as among other things as the leader of the NSDAP party and
Reichschancellor for the German state during 1933-1945. Author of Mein
Kampf, one of the best selling books in the world." (my translation of
http://www.metapedia.se/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&oldid=5332) Compare
this to svwiki's
http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&oldid=3639920). Not
particularly the absence of any mention of genocide or his part in WWII.
Since Wikipedia is GFDL they could easily have borrowed that article. (But I
guess it didn´t suit their purposes.)

4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
this makes sense? Also, they have not given the full text of the
GFDL-licence. Don´t you have to do that?

5. Right now Metapedia have around 1.300 articles. This is to be measured
against svwikis more than 200.000 articles. This does not appear to make any
kind of threat, but why wait until every other search on Google has a
Metapedia hit on second place (after Wikipedia, of course)? A random Google
user probably can't be expected to know that Metapedia is run by people who
claim that millions of Jews *didn't die* in the concentration camps.

Worth noting is also that they have a Danish version since December 3rd
2006. The Swedish version has been online since August 3rd 2006.

My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better? Unfortunally, I
suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow? The
journalist who called me seemed to hold Wikipedia in high esteem and seemed
also to want to know what would be our reaction to this "evil twin"-version
of Wikipedia. I hope you can help me with your opinion.

I await your answers.

Best regards,

Lennart, aka Hannibal
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[geni]

On 2/7/07, Lennart Guldbrandsson <wikihannibal@...> wrote:
> 4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
> called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
> this makes sense?

It would depends what that legaly means

> Also, they have not given the full text of the
> GFDL-licence. Don´t you have to do that?
>

Yes you are required to provide a full copy of the GFDL.

> 5. Right now Metapedia have around 1.300 articles. This is to be measured
> against svwikis more than 200.000 articles. This does not appear to make any
> kind of threat, but why wait until every other search on Google has a
> Metapedia hit on second place (after Wikipedia, of course)? A random Google
> user probably can't be expected to know that Metapedia is run by people who
> claim that millions of Jews *didn't die* in the concentration camps.
>

Type "jew" into google. Notice the third result. It's nothing new.


In any case I doubt they will get very good results on google.

> My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
> and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better?

Not really. Can't even really complain.

>Unfortunally, I
> suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
> shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow?

The puzzel globe and the name are protected by trademark. Everything
else is free to use.


This has happened before in english. Lucy for us that time around the
media didn't notice.
--
geni

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Robert Horning]

Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:

>Hello,
>
>(I´m new to this emaillist so please forgive any mistakes I make.)
>
>I´m the press contact for the Swedish Wikipedia (
>http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal). Recently I was
>contacted by a journalist who pointed out a fairly new wiki called
>Metapedia, at http://www.metapedia.se, which was founded by a known racist
>and leader of a small nationalistic (and antidemocratic) party in Sweden (I
>can give several newspaper articles to back up that claim.). I checked it
>out and discovered several things:
>
>1. It used MediaWiki and thus look *very* similiar to Wikipedia. Even their
>logo is in the same colour range. One could easily mistake one for the
>other. This is one spinoff effect of the free MediaWiki, and probably one we
>will see again. But the site uses the same phrases as svwiki, such as
>Läsvärd artikel (featured article) and so on.
>

Such phrases are not trademarked, nor as I'm aware something you could
trademark, which would be the only reason to consider them protected
anyway.  The "look and feel" might be copyrighted by somebody, but I'm
not sure exactly who would hold out here, especially if most of this is
part of the standard install of MediaWiki software.  That interface
would be GPL'd because of the software.  The "main page" might be
copyrighted by specific Swedish Wikipedia contributors, but that is even
debatable here and not something to worry to hard about.

>2. It has around 1300 articles, but the majority is about either a) people
>connected to nazism, holocaust denial or critics of the Jewish conspiracy
>(and their works)
>
While not something I would do personally, there is nothing here illegal.

>3. Their articles are often copied and edited versions of the svwiki
>counterparts, with apparent POV-slant in their favour.
>
<*snip*>

>Since Wikipedia is GFDL they could easily have borrowed that article. (But I
>guess it didn´t suit their purposes.)
>
This is where they might get into a bit of trouble.  This is not a
violation of the terms of the GFDL to have copied these articles and
altered them in such a fashion, but they must also pass on the same
licensing terms onto others who come and visit their website.  If you or
somebody you know (with a note on the Swedish Wikipedia's village pump,
for instance) want to enforce your copyright on content you have
written, you might want to let this website owner know that you would
like the full terms of the GFDL to be enforced.  Who knows, you might
even be able to move some of these articles back to sv.wikipedia if they
are of any better quality, of course correcting for POV issues.

>4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
>called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
>this makes sense? Also, they have not given the full text of the
>GFDL-licence. Don´t you have to do that?
>
Even Wikimedia projects have had some problems with this in the past, so
I wouldn't throw stones too far on this one.  The full text must be
linked somehow and "on the network", however you want to define that.  A
"local copy" on the website itself would be a good idea, but I'm not
sure how necessary that is from a legal standpoint.  A copy is required
to be in the same medium, such as a paper copy of the license if you
have a printed version, or it must be a file on a CD-ROM, etc.

>My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
>and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better? Unfortunally, I
>suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
>shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow? The
>journalist who called me seemed to hold Wikipedia in high esteem and seemed
>also to want to know what would be our reaction to this "evil twin"-version
>of Wikipedia. I hope you can help me with your opinion.
>
>I await your answers.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Lennart, aka Hannibal
>

If there are copyright violations, you can try and enforce the
copyright.  That would mean enforcing the GFDL.  I'm not familiar with
Swedish copyright and publishing law, but there may be some libel issues
if the POV goes a little to far for somebody who is currently living,
such as en.wikipedia had with John Siegenthaler.  In that case it would
be the person who is "featured" that would have to start legal action if
they didn't like what was being said about them.  

There may be something like the German law that restricts the usage of
symbols of the Nazi party and name, but I hope you know what would apply
in Sweden in that situation.  All you could do there anyway is to
contact the appropriate law enforcement agency if it is illegal.

Otherwise, don't give them too much attention.  Groups like this love
and seek attention, and if you deprive them of that attention they soon
fold up and disappear.  Because this group obviously has an axe to grind
and political message, I wouldn't worry about trying to compete and out
do them.  se.wikipedia is in a strong enough position that the best
response you can give to a reporter is "Yeah, I've heard about them.
 They have nothing to do with Wikipedia."  Don't comment any more, and
if you are pressed for more from a reporter, note that the content of
se.wikipedia is available under the GFDL, and that anybody can copy this
content, even if you don't necessarily agree with their political
idologies.  It might end up being a rather interesting conversation
about free content licenses and what even the reporter and their
newspaper could do with Wikipedia articles.

--
Robert Scott Horning




_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[David Timothy Strauss]

The famous Apple Computer v. Microsoft established that "look and feel"
is not copyrightable.

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Lennart Guldbrandsson wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> (I´m new to this emaillist so please forgive any mistakes I make.)
>>
>> I´m the press contact for the Swedish Wikipedia (
>> http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:Hannibal). Recently I was
>> contacted by a journalist who pointed out a fairly new wiki called
>> Metapedia, at http://www.metapedia.se, which was founded by a known racist
>> and leader of a small nationalistic (and antidemocratic) party in Sweden (I
>> can give several newspaper articles to back up that claim.). I checked it
>> out and discovered several things:
>>
>> 1. It used MediaWiki and thus look *very* similiar to Wikipedia. Even their
>> logo is in the same colour range. One could easily mistake one for the
>> other. This is one spinoff effect of the free MediaWiki, and probably one we
>> will see again. But the site uses the same phrases as svwiki, such as
>> Läsvärd artikel (featured article) and so on.
>>
> Such phrases are not trademarked, nor as I'm aware something you could
> trademark, which would be the only reason to consider them protected
> anyway.  The "look and feel" might be copyrighted by somebody, but I'm
> not sure exactly who would hold out here, especially if most of this is
> part of the standard install of MediaWiki software.  That interface
> would be GPL'd because of the software.  The "main page" might be
> copyrighted by specific Swedish Wikipedia contributors, but that is even
> debatable here and not something to worry to hard about.
>
>> 2. It has around 1300 articles, but the majority is about either a) people
>> connected to nazism, holocaust denial or critics of the Jewish conspiracy
>> (and their works)
>>
> While not something I would do personally, there is nothing here illegal.
>
>> 3. Their articles are often copied and edited versions of the svwiki
>> counterparts, with apparent POV-slant in their favour.
>>
> <*snip*>
>
>> Since Wikipedia is GFDL they could easily have borrowed that article. (But I
>> guess it didn´t suit their purposes.)
>>
> This is where they might get into a bit of trouble.  This is not a
> violation of the terms of the GFDL to have copied these articles and
> altered them in such a fashion, but they must also pass on the same
> licensing terms onto others who come and visit their website.  If you or
> somebody you know (with a note on the Swedish Wikipedia's village pump,
> for instance) want to enforce your copyright on content you have
> written, you might want to let this website owner know that you would
> like the full terms of the GFDL to be enforced.  Who knows, you might
> even be able to move some of these articles back to sv.wikipedia if they
> are of any better quality, of course correcting for POV issues.
>
>> 4. They have given the licence *both* as GFDL *and* have what in Swedish is
>> called "ansvarig utgivare" (roughly "legally responsible publisher"). Does
>> this makes sense? Also, they have not given the full text of the
>> GFDL-licence. Don´t you have to do that?
>>
> Even Wikimedia projects have had some problems with this in the past, so
> I wouldn't throw stones too far on this one.  The full text must be
> linked somehow and "on the network", however you want to define that.  A
> "local copy" on the website itself would be a good idea, but I'm not
> sure how necessary that is from a legal standpoint.  A copy is required
> to be in the same medium, such as a paper copy of the license if you
> have a printed version, or it must be a file on a CD-ROM, etc.
>
>> My question is how to handle this. Can we do anything else beside complain
>> and try to outdo Metapedia by being sooo much better? Unfortunally, I
>> suspect that this may be the price of free software and free content, but
>> shouldn't Wikipedia be able to protect its reputation somehow? The
>> journalist who called me seemed to hold Wikipedia in high esteem and seemed
>> also to want to know what would be our reaction to this "evil twin"-version
>> of Wikipedia. I hope you can help me with your opinion.
>>
>> I await your answers.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lennart, aka Hannibal
>>
> If there are copyright violations, you can try and enforce the
> copyright.  That would mean enforcing the GFDL.  I'm not familiar with
> Swedish copyright and publishing law, but there may be some libel issues
> if the POV goes a little to far for somebody who is currently living,
> such as en.wikipedia had with John Siegenthaler.  In that case it would
> be the person who is "featured" that would have to start legal action if
> they didn't like what was being said about them.  
>
> There may be something like the German law that restricts the usage of
> symbols of the Nazi party and name, but I hope you know what would apply
> in Sweden in that situation.  All you could do there anyway is to
> contact the appropriate law enforcement agency if it is illegal.
>
> Otherwise, don't give them too much attention.  Groups like this love
> and seek attention, and if you deprive them of that attention they soon
> fold up and disappear.  Because this group obviously has an axe to grind
> and political message, I wouldn't worry about trying to compete and out
> do them.  se.wikipedia is in a strong enough position that the best
> response you can give to a reporter is "Yeah, I've heard about them.
>  They have nothing to do with Wikipedia."  Don't comment any more, and
> if you are pressed for more from a reporter, note that the content of
> se.wikipedia is available under the GFDL, and that anybody can copy this
> content, even if you don't necessarily agree with their political
> idologies.  It might end up being a rather interesting conversation
> about free content licenses and what even the reporter and their
> newspaper could do with Wikipedia articles.
>

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Robert Horning]

David Strauss wrote:

>The famous Apple Computer v. Microsoft established that "look and feel"
>is not copyrightable.
>  
>
Under U.S. Copyright law.  I don't know swedish copyright law, so I
can't say.  Besides, a user interface is copyrightable, and all that the
Apple vs. Microsoft did was establish that the particular user interface
for Windows was not a complete rip off of Apple's, with a preceedent
that if there were some functional differences that it couldn't be used
as grounds for copyright infringement.

It didn't help Apple that they had ripped off most of their interface
from Xerox, but who is splitting hairs here anyway.

--
Robert Scott Horning




_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@...
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l