be prohibited for major news sources or other commercial websites to use Wikipedia content verbatim without payment and without asking for permission. Wikipedia benefits greatly from the commercial use of their content. They are integrated tightly with several search engines, which further the distribution of Wikipedia content, and hence the knowledge compiled by collaboration. The operation of a search engine is an undoubtebly commercial enterprise aimed at profits Another example for commercial usage which supports Wikipedia is the distribution of the DVD versions of Wikipedia, such as the Ger- man version produced by the Berlin-based company Directmedia. Within a period of short time this DVD became a bestseller – because of its low price tag and a software with extended search functions. A prerequisite for creating a Wikipedia DVD was that Directmedia was able to use its contents simply because it is allowed by the license. Furthermore, the project encou- raged to sort out incomplete articles, so that they would not end up in the DVD project. Fi- nally, the Wikipedians helped to make the data indexable and sortable. In return, Directmedia donated one Euro per sold DVD to German Wikipedia and inflated the Wikimedia image archive with a content donation of 10,000 re- productions of public domain artworks. The business concept of the Wikipedia DVD worked because the software added new fea- tures and made the content more attractive, but also because it used a different medium. Even if you often get to hear that the difference bet- ween online and offline is fading, the traditio- nal lexicon and reference format of the DVD
SA license works in a contagious or viral way: The newly created work (the edited version) as a whole can only be published under the same li- cense. This alone prevents many companies from appropriating free content which is licensed un- der Share Alike. It would require them to release their own reproduction, advertisement materials (or whatever the end result might be used for) to the public under the same Share Alike license – and that is one thing most companies, especially larger ones, are not willing to do. At the same time the Share Alike module – as opposed to the NC module – does not have the negative effect of hindering the distribution of content (in blogs for example) in general. Qui- te the opposite: With the Share Alike license all edits are under a CC license and the appropriated version can thus be used afterwards not only be the editor but by any third party. 8 Can NC-licensed content be used in the Wikipedia pro- ject? No. Wikipedia contents are being used commercially.
One of the reasons for the widespread and in- tense usage of Wikipedia is that its contents may be used commercially. Otherwise it would
13
Made with FlippingBook Annual report