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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by M. Dingemanse (talk | contribs) at 22:38, 31 October 2004 (Objectssearch Encyclopedia / stealing bandwidth / reported at m:N-c s c). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mirrors and Forks : (Numbers) ABC - DEF - GHI - JKL - MNO - PQR - STU - VWXYZ - All - Archive

This page lists sites that, in the opinion of the people who list them here, either do not comply at all, or fail in a very significant way to meet our licencing requirements. For instance they may claim their own copyright with all rights reserved on their pages. Wikipedia contributors are almost certain to take action against sites listed here. See the parent article for further details.

Please help preserve alphabetical order on this page.

Site Overviews

Everything Preschool

  • Uses Wikipedia content
  • Can't find any source information
  • No links to Wikipedia or the GFDL
  • Plenty ads

[[User:Solitude|Solitude\talk]] 07:40, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Alumni @ alumni.grunderskolen.no

  • Article mentioned on mainpage where they state that it comes from wikipedia.com, apart from that they are not near compliance. No action taken. Should they prove troublesome or unresponsive, give me a wink.--Dittaeva 18:36, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

2BuyGood.com/InfoPedia

  • (E-mail sent by Dori asking not to do this -- no response yet)
Furthermore, the site doesn't mention GFDL, it claims copyright in the footer and it attempts to use Javascript to capture middle-clicks and right-clicks in an attempt to prevent copying of the text/source viewing, etc. Clearly, something should be done about this. 81.211.110.171 20:46, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
as User:Zzo38 noted, as of May 30th the wiki on that site is gone and the site's homepage is but a placeholder. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:50, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
    • The wiki is back up. - Evil saltine 09:57, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • There's no contact information listed, but I found an e-mail on whois which came back as invalid. There's a PO-Box listed, maybe I could send a notice by snail mail (not that I suspect it would do any good). - Evil saltine 10:23, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • The page info gives another copyright: "Copyright � 2001-2004 Neeraj Pajni". Together with the bottom-of-page reference ("Copyright 2001 - 2004 2BuyGoods.com"), it all gives a rather odd situation. --Kasperl 18:57, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • This is some kid (Neeraj Pajni) in his bedroom the about us even says it is. The Administrative contact for both 2buygoods.com and 2buygood.com is webmaster@ubuystuff.com. However when he registrated ubystuff.com he lists his own name, with a street address and telephone numbers. I'm not in the US, somebody ring his parents and tell them their son has been very naughty. Appologies to all Neerajs if it is a feminine name. The site is hosted by powweb.com in California, if you can find an article on his site that you wrote, send them a take-down notice if we can't get anywhere PowWeb Details

Ancientsites forum

(A forum post.) See Talk:Alamanni.
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GNU FDL

AskMyTutor

  • Appear to be verbatim copies of (old versions of) many WP articles. Have not checked in great detail yet.
  • No mention of WP.
  • Main page mentions "free content", but no license info.
  • Looks pretty new - domain was registered 5 May 2004.
Please check facts before acting - I have not checked much, no time right now. Tualha 22:53, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Biography Base

  • Contains copies of old Wikipedia articles on various people.
  • Has a mention of Wikipedia but no link to Wikipedia articles.
  • No link to GFDL.
  • Now links to GFDL and mentions individual Wikipedia article, but does not directly link. - Evil saltine 10:57, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Biography Finder

  • Contains older versions of Wikipedia articles on various people.
  • Has no mention of Wikipedia.
  • No link to GFDL.
  • Claims copyright.
  • Is apparently linked with Phobia Finder.
  • Sent standard GFDL e-mail. - Evil saltine 22:43, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Removed from main page (duplicate)

Catholic University of Brussels

  • Most of main site is in Dutch
  • Copies the Semantic Web article completely
  • Mentions Wikipedia and has a link on the bottom (not clickable)
  • No GFDL Link
  • Sent standard GFDL email. David Newton 16:36, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • If problem persists, and Dutch translation seems needed, add a message to my talk page. Don't expect a quick response from me, though. --Kasperl 19:27, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Chessbase.com

(article about Howard Staunton)

  • link to current version of article, mentions Wikipedia as source
  • no link to GFDL (perhaps not needed - very short text)
    • I agree, but we could tell him to put source: wikipedia (under GFDL). wikipedia would link to article, gfdl to license?
    • It's long enough to be copyrighted, so they should probably license the entire thing under the GFDL. Which will be nice, because they have some nice photos we could use. Martin 10:41, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • Any more feedback for this? Should we tell them to license the entire article, or just add "(under GFDL)" with a link to the GFDL. The rest of the article is unrelated to the first part about Howard Staunton IMHO, so I don't see how it is even an extension of the Howard Staunton article. dave 18:28, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • I suggest completely ignoring it. We're prominent enough that a link to our article with our name is ample notice that people can reuse that text. Chances are that we're better recognised as meaning open content than the initials GFDL are at this point... The picture of Howard Staunton appears to be a simple reproduction of a work made during his life and given his date of death and US law that means it is now in the public domain and can be taken from their site and used in the Wikipedia. Jamesday 21:05, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Chinese Psychology Online

  • Mention of wikipedia
  • No mention/link to GFDL
  • No link to wikipedia homepage or the article at wikipedia
  • Instead _they_ claim copyright of the article(s)
  • Examples: [1], [2], [3]
  • Sent the standard letter. --snoyes 18:16, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Got the following autoreply - most probably chinese (don't know what character encoding they're using), can anyone translate it?:
ÄúµÄÓÊ??<thorn>ÒÑ??-ÊÕµ½¡£
ÓÉÓÚ1??ÖÏÈÉ??ú£¬¡¶Ö<ETH>1??<ETH>ÄÀíÈÈÏß¡·ÒÔ¼°¡¶½ñÈ??<ETH>ÄÀí¡·´??????<eth>ÔY´»ºÓʼ<thorn>*Éѯ»Ø¸´¡??
ºÎʱ»Ö¸´Áí<ETH><ETH>֪ͨ¡£
This seemed to be in Simplified Chinese. The first line is "Your mail has been received". The second is scrambled by the markup text beyond recognition ("due to...."). The third one seems to be "we would notify you separately on when to resume...". --Hlaw 15:10, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Chess and beyond

(Several pages. [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16])

  • No mention of wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Claims to own copyright
  • Standard letter sent by Arvindn 15 Nov 2003.
  • Still in violation - who sends another letter? Andre Engels 01:59, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Site's been down for a while -- Arvindn 12:55, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Site back up, follow up letter sent by me -- Arvindn 09:10, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC) Online contact form gives 404 when you hit "send", and email bounced. Any idea what to do? -- Arvindn 10:39, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Run whois on the domain name. (Just in case: whois is a UNIX command, some web based whois interfaces are also out there, you might want to google for them.) Then contact the email address that whois returns. Legal issues with a web site are a valid reason to retrieve and contact email addresses from whois databases. 217.9.28.225 20:18, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Civil-War.ws

  • Copies large amounts of articles from Wikipedia pages such as Civil War and Abraham Lincoln.
  • No link to original article, no mention of Wikipedia.
  • No mention of GFDL.
  • Claims copyright to content: "The contents of this web site are Copyright © 2003 Otherground, LLC and Civil-War.ws. All Rights Reserved. Please review our Privacy Policy."
  • Is for-profit (has ads).
  • Is currently down. - Evil saltine 11:02, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Page is back up, haven't checked anything but status. --Kasperl 19:31, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Complexity Theory page

  • No link to original article
  • No mention of GFDL

Dutch wiki freeler

  • Mentions the dutch wiki and freeler are partners
  • No link from freelerhomepage, so not yet in production
  • They (as yet) have not yet contacted the dutch wiki
  • They have a simple perl script directly querying the wiki servers, it is NO MIRROR. They are using wiki bandwidth, cpu and memory.
  • With the complete database of course also comes the GNU/FDL.
  • site unreachable on morning fr Jan 9, possibly in reaction to discussions on dutch wikitech.
Appears to be gone now. [ alerante 02:16, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC) ]

eBook 2u (ebook2u dot com)

The web site now appears to have a link to Wikipedia and the GFDL. Should this entry be moved to another page? --Chessphoon 03:30, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[EncycloZine]

Many articles, sometimes older versions, for example see Artzia/Law EncycloZine is organized into subsites which include: Artzia.com, Eluzions.com DiXionary.com Kosmoi.com and possibly others, all very liberally plastered with links to books available on Amazon. Wikipedia articles are most likely to be met with on Artzia.com and Kosmoi.com

  • Not always link to current version of article
  • Not always link to GFDL

eurovisionarchive

Year Pages for Eurovision takes from wikipedia for example see: http://eurovisionarchive.members.beeb.net/Years/1969.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest_1969 (they have added the interval sections witch i amn finsihing at the moment and its not exactly the same).
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GNU FDL
    • If there is any its not on each page.
      • Standard letter sent by Angela, 11 November 2003 via the feedback form on their site.
        • They now have a link with "From Wikipedia, licensed under the GFDL", but they link to the main page, not to the specific article. Angela 01:56, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)
          • The link and mention of Wikipedia has now disapeard. - fonzy
            • Most of the site seems to not be working now. Maybe they are in the process of doing something with it and will add the links back in. I can't access any pages used to have Wikipedia content on them. Angela. 23:36, Jan 13, 2004 (UTC)
          • The site seems to be working and seems to be hosted by beeb.net, which has a no illegal acts policy for its end users. A polite email to abuse at beeb.net would probably take care of the matter. May want to give their customer another reminder first, since it appears to be an individual's effort and individuals do take time to get things done. Perhaps give three months to do it and say we'll ask the BBC to take care of it if not fixed by then? Jamesday 21:21, 16 Jan 2004 (UTC)

explanation-guide

  • Mirror site
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Links to Wikipedia says "Some material used on this site derives from the Wikipedia project" and other links back to here
  • Claims "Are you subject to US Copyright Law?

No. We believe in fair use and freedom of speech. We do however also strongly believe in the rights of copyright holders and do our best to preserve copyright and will not knowingly publish materials without permission."

  • Contact: feedback-1607@explanation-guide.info given as contact details

Moved from top page where it said "They link back to Wikipedia, but in an unreadably small font." however i can't see this in the page source 12/9/04

In impossibly small blue font at the bottom of an article, it says "copyright information". Only if you click this does a miniscule popup window appear telling you this is GNUFDL from Wikipedia. I don't know if that's compliant -- I don't know GFDL well enough. Also, they use all our images without a link....maybe do they think acknowledging the article gives them the right to use the images? I'd contact them, but I need to figure out how our license works first, I suppose. :-) Jwrosenzweig 22:36, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) Davelane 12:37, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It uses javascript, not just to popup the link to the original wikipedia article, but also to avoid using the word "Wikipedia" in the HTML source code. However there is now a www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html link on the page. --Henrygb 17:16, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Looks like they are there now: line near the bottom (for Red) looks a bit like

Licensing information: This article uses material from Wikipedia (credits) and is made available under the terms of the GNU FDL - Henrygb 18:18, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
But not every article has that line. Gbe languages for example has no copyright information at all (as of today). - Mark Dingemanse 15:29, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Follow up. Since explanation-guide (EG) did not give attribution for the image at Gbe languages which I created and released under CC-by-2.0, I thought I'd send an email. Below I paste the contents of my first mail, the answer of mr. Lawrence Smith of EG, and my response. I sent my mail to feedback-1607@explanation-guide.info and to info@explanation-guide.info and I got an answer from info@explanation-guide.info. I will be posting further results soon. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 21:49, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Dear Sir/Madam,
As creator of the images used on http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Gbe-languages.html, http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/African-languages.html, and http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Nilo-Saharan-languages.html (all copies of the Wikipedia articles of the same title) I object to your use of them.
The images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). Explanation-Guide, unlike Wikipedia, does not give the required attribution, thereby violating the license.
I trust that you resolve this issue soon, either by not using the images or by giving proper attribution to the creator.
Thank you,
Mark Dingemanse
Dear Mr. Dingemanse,
Please accept my apologies: I was not aware that the images are licensed seperately to the texts. Thankyou for pointing this out.
As a short-term solution we have linked each image to an information page which links to the relevant page at Wikipedia. I hope this established attribution. We will try and add a more user-friendly and informative solution in the near future.
Yours sincerely
Lawrence Smith
Dear Mr. Smith,
thank you for your quick response. However, the short-term solution you propose does not work at present for the images I mentioned. The problem is that the respective Wikipedia articles contain scaled down versions of the original images. In the Wikipedia articles, this scaled down version is linked to the original image and to the attribution information, thereby fulfilling the license requirements. On explanation-guide, this link is lost, the scaled down version is copied, and the information page instead refers to a non-existent page on Wikipedia. Which leaves the issue unresolved.
I do trust that you will find a solution soon.
Thank you,
Mark Dingemanse
Dear Mr. Dingemanse,
Once again my apologies. The links now take into account scaling issues and link to the correct Wikipedia page.
Yours sincerely
Lawrence Smith
  • Looks OK now; they responded to my question (see above correspondence). But can anyone doublecheck if this site is compliant or not? - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 07:23, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Famous-astrophysicists.com

  • Standard follow-up sent by mav 10:53, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

FIDE

  • Edited version of the World Chess Championship article (this is on the official site of the 2004 FIDE World Chess Championship, and is quite a high-profile page)
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL (FIDE claims copyright)
  • Slightly altered standard letter sent June 18, 2004 by Camembert

FirstCarHire.com

  • Uses Wikipedia articles - text from country / city articles used to pad out car-hire listings for respective locations.
  • No mention of GFDL
    • now has link to GFDL
  • No mention of Wikipedia
    • now has text wikipedia content based (about - copyrights) on bottom of respective pages, links to Wikipedia:About and Copyrights. --Ianb 08:57, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Examples: [19] from United States. See [20] for more.

Fitness pills

  • Copied Hangover article (after adding his own ad to the bottom!)
  • Claims copyright, no link to GFDL
  • (Moved up from "Obsolete Section" 24 March 2004)
  • All of the above still exists on the current date --Kasperl 19:35, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Copies most of article (with minor rewording). Could not find the terms "wiki", "FDL", or "doc" on the page. Standard letter sent. --Astronouth7303 00:01, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

http://www.freeglossary.com/Ragnar_Lodbrok (for example)

  • Uses old copies of Wikipedia
  • no back link to Wikipedia
  • append their own ads to bottom of page
  • assert the right to modify terms and conditions of use
  • No GFDL acknowledgement
  • However the About Us link contains the following: freeglossary.com is powered by PHP, mySQL and Wikipedia
  • Violation letter sent October 21 2004 Sjc 09:01, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

http://www.geocities.com/protoillyrian

Page http://www.geocities.com/protoillyrian/serb.html includes sentences: "It is interesting that the etymology of the name of the Croats (root: Hrv) is also unknown. Some suggest that the names actually originate from the same root: indeed, the roots are distinctly similar (Srb/Hrv)." without any attribution. This is originally written by User:Nikola Smolenski[21] and User:ChrisO[22] in Serbs article.

  • If the above is correct geocities will pull this is we ask them
  • moved from main page Davelane 22:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

GreatPersonalities

  • Copied several chess/tennis/etc. articles in forum postings. EDIT: Correction, they're not really forum postings, they're just articles. Pretty severe.
  • Claims copyright, no link to Wikipedia or GFDL
  • Sent first email Sept. 12, 2004 --Etaonish 19:02, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

greatsite.com

  • No mention of wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Claims to own copyright
  • Doesn't seem clear to me. If there's copying from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, they probably both borrowed from the CCEL.org version; I caught this (and credited the source) in the Philipp Melanchthon article. Joelwest 01:54, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • It seems clear to everyone else but you. The only theory that you have offered is that both numerous (probably in the double digits) _different_ wikipedia editors and the creators of greatsite.com misappropriated material from a mysterious third source. I'd like to know what this third source is. Take the example that I named above. The edit adds a paraph starting "Besides translating the Bible, Tyndale also held and published views which were considered heretical, ...". Now do you honestly claim that a wikipedia user and the creators of greatsite.com both found the same paragraph somewhere and copied it? Do a google search for this first sentence: [23] - you'll see that the only websites that contain this material have taken it from wikipedia. (Funny enough the wikipedia page is not listed there.) I don't see how it could be more clear that they took the material for the Tyndale article as well as others from us. Please give some valid arguments besides saying that it is not clear to you. --snoyes 19:10, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Informationgenius

Infopedia.ruv.net
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND"
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • I'm going after this one. Quite a few articles that I have written mostly or exclusively are on that site, and that rather annoys me to say the least. David Newton 17:32, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
  • Standard letter sent. David Newton 17:41, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Received a reply "Thanks for the email, I'll make sure to make the appropriate changes to my site." That was pretty quick, so I am optimistic over this one. David Newton 18:21, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
      • Second standard letter sent. David Newton 00:26, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • This one is still not resolved; the situation is like described above. No direct link back to the original Wikipedia article, clicking on GFDL gives 404 error. The little line "Copyright Wikipedia Contributors", without link, is in fact the only thing about Wikipedia that can be found on the page.
  • Furthermore, something very nasty is going on: for links that do not exist on infopedia, a utility called webgrap is used to try to rip the info directly from Wikipedia, thus loading the Wikipedia servers. See for ex. Oncology and try the link to Adjunctive therapies in the article (it has a question mark behind it to indicate that the article doesn't exist on Infopedia). The operation does not succeed, but the Wikipedia servers are queried nevertheless; so this is a case of straight bandwidth theft. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 07:10, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)
InfoVoyager
  • Uses geography-related pages from wikipedia.
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND"
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • Same person as infopedia.ruv.net
JapanVoyager
  • Uses geography-related pages from wikipedia.
  • Mentions GFDL but clicking on it gives "!! ERROR !! PAGE NOT FOUND". (The main page of the website which is a copy of List of countries does not mention GFDL)
  • No name or link to original wikipedia article
  • Mention of the word "Wikipedia", but no link available
  • Same person as infopedia.ruv.net
Venice Voyager


Klasikoyun.com

This site is violating GFDL. No attribution, no link to Wikipedia. Links to Wikipedia from main page

  • Some links to Wikipedia
  • No mention of source/GFDL
  • seems to be under construction

Moved from main page Davelane 22:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) This was deleted by 212.174.228.10 (Removed Klasikoyun.com site has an attribution in the main page) I've restored this as I beleve they are not in compliance -- if you disagree please move to disputed. --Davelane 16:32, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

InfoWrangler

  • Appears to be complete mirror of English Wikipedia (except images), including same layout
  • "We have integrated InfoWrangler? with Wikipedia"
  • Link to GNU FDL does not work -404 error.
  • Retains "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".
  • Claims Copyright © Object Positive Pty Ltd "All site content"
  • No link to Wikipedia or to article.
  • Sample article (Albania): Albania
Wow. This one is really obnoxious. They copy the site layout, even the edit buttons, so it looks like you're really on Wikipedia. Looks like it's a fairly old snapshot. Isomorphic 02:44, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment only: It demonstrates the run of a tool called infowrangler, as run against the Wikipedia database. Okay well, that seems like an interesting and innovative use of a wikipedia database. If they can tidy up their act a bit, this could become a good demonstration of what FSF licensing is all about. Now if only those folks could release infowrangler under the GPL ;-). Kim Bruning 12:18, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
    • This site does not clarify that its material is a copy of the original source. Perhaps the owners thought that by including all Wikipedia namespace articles etc. with information about the project, that would suffice to clear them of legal issues. They were mistaken: the GDFL specifically states in part 4 to: "Preserve... the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on." This seems to be one of a multitude of policy breaches. Perhaps more importantly, usage of the Wikipedia name and logo (even a retired version) in this way is to be seriously discouraged as it leads to problems with retaining trademark rights. Has anyone sent a letter yet? -- Kwekubo 01:05, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

InvestingCompany.com fixed?

  • Does not acknowledge wikipedia authorship, links to wikipedia
  • States that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL.
  • Does not link to the relevant wikipedia page (or wikipedia at all)
  • Example: [24] from SARS.

KnowledgeGeek fixed?

Knowledgegeek now looks close to compliance, acknowledging Wikipedia as the original source and linking to the GFDL. Do people agree that they are now largely compliant? --Robert Merkel 04:30, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The site has definitely improved. However, witness all the 'summary' pages one level in from the root page (such as Coffee) still being composed largely of Wikipedia content without any acknowledgement. A sentence or two, lifted directly from Wikipedia is shown in many entries on those 'summary' pages (such as Drip brew, French press, Caffeine, etc. on the Coffee page above) yet you must click through to the full text before a Wikipedia or GFDL reference is made. A reference to Wikipedia and GFDL on all pages with even 'truncated' Wikipedia content (ie, the first few sentences of a bunch of articles) would still seem to be required. Potentially also worth mentioning is that the engine or template system used by KnowledgeGeek is used by StudioReview.com (documented on this page and supported/linked by Mark Coffman of KnowledgeGeek) and as of this writing, StudioReview has a low degree of compliance. I'm not suggesting that the owner/operator of KnowledgeGeek is able to accomplish this, but one wonders if it's possible to add compliance at an engine- or template-level for sites like this which are clearly copying Wikipedia content in huge quantities. Ds13 20:46, 2004 Mar 11 (UTC)
The remaining problems identified above seem to be addressed now. I would agree that they are largely compliant now. --Ds13 06:50, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)

Magnet-university at rare-earth-magnets.com

  • Lots of stuff taken from Wikipedia, like Magnetism article, biographies under "Magnetic personalities", and a few others.
  • It says Copyright 2002 - GNU Free Documentation License. This is hyperlinked to a year 2000 version of the GNU license!
    • Linking to the old version is OK. We used that initially.
  • No mention of Wikipedia anywhere, no link to article
  • Is this a breach? If so, what should we do?
    • Yes it is a breach. Wikipedia has to be credited and either a link back or list of 5 authors is needed. Time to send a letter. --mav
      • Actually Wikipedia doesn't have to be credited, since it's just another publisher of the user-copyrighted text, like all the other sites on this page. Only a list of five authors is necessary (the link back can be in lieu of that).
  • Standard letter sent by: dave 19:28 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Received reply from scott.madsen@nationalimports.com, and they are willing to fix it. Can someone tell me exactly what to tell them to do? I know they need to link to the original Wikipedia article, but what about the GFDL? Can they link to a local version or a gnu.org version? Anything else? dave 18:44 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • See above ^"Linking to the old version is OK." However you should suggest they link to the newest. MB 20:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Finally sent reply to Scott Madsen today outlining what he should do to fix it, and telling him all the articles that were lifted from Wikipedia (he had emailed me asking which articles were from wikipedia). I'm confident they'll fix it although I'd expect it to take a while. dave 07:25, 5 Sep 2003 (UTC)
  • They have the very odd 'Copyright 2002 - GNU Free Documentation License' at the bottom of each page now which does not give any author info or links to Wikipedia. I just sent them a letter and noted that I am the primary author of the bismuth article they copied. --mav 12:51, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
  • Received this reply: Were sorry for the oversight. We'll correct the link as soon as possible. --mav 18:33, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)


Namibia Internet Gateway

  • A bit of lookup shows that this is hosted at 64.151.72.220 which belongs to the ISP ServePath.com in San Francisco - let your takedowns roll 28 Sep 2004
  • mirror of Wikipedia, but not with correct backlinking.---Dittaeva 08:47, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Mentions GFDL but 'unbelivibly' links to a oscommerce site "Welcome to your Online Pharmacist" instead of the licence!!!
  • I checked this today 18/9/04 and it now links to a Nuke site -- my guess is its some kind of spam link device --82.43.209.114 18:47, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Needs action! --Davelane 21:52, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

--Davelane 21:52, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • also see: http://www.namweb.com.na/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Main+Page namibweb
  • No link to Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • No contact information
  • Example - University of Delaware
  • Standard letter sent by: ?
  • http://www.namweb.com.na/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Main%20Page
  • Appears to be a complete dump of Wikipedia taken at the end of March 2004. The site appears to have been operational since early April 2004. The site includes user pages and the pages fully editable with the exception of the standard protected pages. No mention of GNU Free Documentation License, instead it states "The site is Sponcored (sic) by Namibia Internet Gateway OaSyS, AfricaLinks, NamWeb, NIG". Judging by recent changes the site appears to be attracting a few vandals.
    • Wikipedia users seem to be disappearing. The pages are still there. [ alerante | “” 00:19, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC) ]

Objectssearch Encyclopedia - 'the free encyclopedia'

  • Only links back to en.wikipedia.org, does not link back to original article.
  • Mentions GFDL, linking to GNU.org.
  • This site is stealing Wikipedia bandwidth. When looking up an article, the script get.jsp queries the en.wikipedia.org server realtime , strips the result down to the text alone and places it its own page. Evidence: I tested various pages that I knew had changed very recently (not more than two hours ago), e.g. Tuareg languages. They all returned the most recent version.
  • The best example is of course looking up the main page: [29]!
  • Needs action. Probably standard letter is not enough. Someone who is more fluent and eloquent than I am in English, please help. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 21:32, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Online-Encyclopedia.info

I added this back as info was removed --Davelane 17:01, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Main page links to Wikipedia and to GFDL (local)
  • Has Contact Info: Contact: online at online-encycopedia.info
  • No mentioning of Wikipedia --Davelane 17:01, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Has a misleading "Copyright © 2004, Online-Encyclopedia.info" above the mentioning of GFDL
  • Each page now says "Content from wikipedia.org is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License"
  • Example - Psychology

Owner seems to be updating this page so to summerise requirements...

  • Each page needs to link to the original article
  • Each page needs to link to the GFDL and wikipedia

Thanks for taking notice of this -- I will leave this here for now, but i will move it in a couple of weeks out of low... --Davelane 11:38, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you. I will make the changes. I purchased this site from another individual and was unaware of the requirements. I do not wish to violate any guidelines set by the great effort by wikipedia.

Changes seem to have reverted back so leaving in low for now --Davelane 19:24, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • So, to summarize, as of Oct 20, 2004:
    • Still only the sentence "Content from wikipedia.org is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License".
    • No link to Wikipedia, let alone a direct link to the original Wikipedia article
    • No link to the GFDL; fulltext of the license not available. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 20:24, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What are you talking about? NO changes have reverted back. Everything you mention above is and has been present for several weeks?

I had a quick look and I can't see a link back to the original article etc, the only link to wikipedia I saw was on the front page which is a lot better then some sites here -- have a look at the the main mirrors and forks page, Regards --Davelane 16:23, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, everything should be right on every page. Please advise.

Palestine article

  • No link to Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • No contact information on the main page of their website. Can anyone find it?
  • Standard letter sent by: ?

peacelink.de

  • Looks like a test copy of WP
  • Fails to show GFDL
  • Does link lots to wikipedia

We should contact the domain register and ask them to take this offline or finish it Moved from main page Davelane 23:16, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

====Persian Football] (from the article Ali Daei, see Talk:Ali Daei)

  • No link to Wikipedia article
  • No link to GFDL
  • Claiming a different author
  • Claiming copyright at the page footer

PRC People's Daily

  • I posted a message. --mav 10:45, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedians Montrealais and Menchi basically wrote that article from scratch, so it is original, to Wikipedia. I'd know, I'm Menchi and I think I know Montrealais well enough.
Well, if we ever had spare lawyers and wanted publicity, "Wikipedia sues Chinese government for copyright infringement" would be hilarious. =] --Delirium 12:29, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)

phatnav.com

  • Confusing display of license and authorship information
  • No link to wikipedia homepage or the specific article page
  • Standard letter sent by mav 11:59, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Response:

I did have a link at one time. My engineer has been making some changes
to the template, so I guess we dropped the link at some point. I'll make
sure it's put back.

--mav 23:21, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

  • Unchanged still. Also, it'd be nice if they'd avoid titling their pages "Articlename - Wikipedia", which seems like borderline trademark infringement (though the line between attribution and infringement is fine, I'll acknowledge). --Delirium 12:37, Feb 6, 2004 (UTC)
    • Keeps coming up at the top of my google searches these days... we need to nail these guys. +sj+ 16:20, 2004 Mar 28 (UTC)
  • I just sent a standard Violation Letter Follow-Up. Andrewlevine 04:01, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

UNCONFIRMED Contact info via online sources: 508-481-3336 listed for three names:

  • Frances A Barry, 1126 Concord Rd, Marlborough, MA 01752
  • Skip Guss, East Coast Golf Academy, 333 Southwest Cutoff Northboro MA 01532 Golfrite@aol.com
  • Shawn P. McCarthy, Diagonal Media Group, Inc. 37 Woodridge Road Marlborough, MA 01752
    • service@diagonalmediagroup.com
    • shawn.mccarthy@diagonalmediagroup.com
    • internaut@diagonalmediagroup.com

Notes:

  • McCarthy appears to be author of 'The Art of .COMbat', and a Lycos developer
  • Phatnav is shaping up to be the top leech site of Wikipedia content.

Jokestress 05:06, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Phatnav's pages still claim copyright. Straight mirror of WP content. Makes near fraudulent claims (they copy some of our pages that say "content provided by visitors to this site", further implying content is theirs). I can still see no GFDL or WP links, pages imply they are owned by PhatNav.

This is just about the worst possible violation (straight copy / adding ads / claiming copyright / not crediting authors) and given that they have not responded to previous letters, I propose we escalate according to standard protocol (please drop me a line if you want to work with me on this one). Mat-C 20:41, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Violation still going stong. <quote>PhatNav's Encyclopedia - A "Wikipedia"</quote> sounds like trademark dilution to me. --Spikey 21:28, 21 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Appears to be compliant now. "A Wikipedia" no longer displayed, and although it's in VERY tiny print, at the very bottom of each page they say "The Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. It is offered as open source and is free to reuse according to the GNU Free documentation License. The original version of this page can be found at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/<ARTICLENAME>." Their copyright notice states "All content Copyright 2003 - PhatNav and Diagonal Media Group Inc. (Except as noted on pages containing separately licensed content.) All rights reserved." Catherine | talk 18:33, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Phobia Finder

  • Uses content of -phobia, with minor editing.
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of GFDL
  • Affiliated with Biography Finder.

PostgreSQL General Bits

  • Link to main page of Wikipedia
  • Very small section of article about Edgar F. Codd (1 paragraph)
  • No link to GFDL or the article

Public Domain art

  • Uses a part of the article about Public Domain (1 paragraph)
  • Mentions Wikipedia with no link
  • Contains a section of the Fair Use Doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act, stating something about "fair use", but no GFDL Link.
  • More than one paragraph, AFAICT. Martin 10:22, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

RSA article

  • No visible link to current Wikipedia article
  • no link to GFDL
  • Standard letter sent by: ?
  • It is an HTML copy of the print version so "Retrieved from "http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=RSA"" is on the page. But there still isn't a link to the GFDL. We really should add that to our print page template. --mav 02:19 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

SCA wiki

  • Link & mention of GFDL
  • No link to/credit given to wikipedia article; only a generic notice: "some of the initial information in Cunnan was taken from the Wikipedia but has been, or will be rewritten to make it relevant to people interested in medieval re-enactment"
  • Example: [30]
    • As this is another wiki it is hard to control what other users put in. There is a general directive on the Village Pump to credit all wikipedia articles appropriately, and there has been a recent effort by several users to track down and tag such pages when they have become apparent. Even considering that the citation here was not appropriately credited, I am not entirely sure why this was listed as a low compliance site when there were both links to wikipedia and GFDL. Conrad Leviston 13:13, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Science Fair Projects Encyclopedia

  • Copies of many science and science-related articles (example: [31])
  • Link to www.wikipedia.org exists but is not clickable
  • No GFDL link
  • "Copyright (C) 2003 All Science Fair Projects.com All Rights Reserved" listed on every page
  • Copyright notice and disclaimer, albeit very informative, are not linked to from either the main page or the article pages
  • Standard letter sent. Telso 04:24, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
    • Article pages show update as of 10-05-04 but still not compliant. JamesMLane 12:49, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com

  • Contains a small section of the article about vendor lock-in
  • Mentions Wikipedia, but has no link
  • No GFDL Link

SmartPedia

Snazon.com

Star Trek: USS Scorpion

  • The page known allies combines material from various Wikipedia pages, possibly with other text included as well.
  • No mention of Wikipedia
  • No mention of the GNU/FDL

StudioReview

  • many articles on this site are verbatim copies of Wikipedia articles (too many to list; as with KnowledgeGeek, all content may actually be driven dynamically or statically off Wikipedia)
  • no mention of Wikipedia
  • no mention of GFDL
  • admin and domain registrant of site is Ron Vreeland and has the following contact addresses: mailto:ron@cherone.com , mailto:webmaster@studioreview.com
  • site is listed as a supporter of KnowledgeGeek (also accused of non-compliance) and appears to be driven by same or similar content and engine as KnowledgeGeek
Seems to have undergone same improvements as KnowledgeGeek.com. Largely compliant now? --Ds13 06:53, 2004 Mar 21 (UTC)

TYPEsyria.com

(bizarrely, they have a copy of our Jordan disambiguation page! Amongst other content.)

  • no link to article
  • no link to GFDL. Standard letter sent by: MB 08:01 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
    • no response received as of Jul 18. Will contact via domain name administrative contact arasa@emirates.net.ae. Does anyone know what country .ae is? Does anyone know of a translator program, or know the language of this country? MB
      • Sounds like United Arab Emirates. Guessing from their location, I'm guessing they speak Arabic (perhaps a different dialect, but I doubt it), like all the other countries around there. There should be a lot of English too. dave
      • .ae is the United Arab Emirates, and the main languages include Arabic, English, Persian, Hindi, and Urdu.
  • Looks like typesyria is down, but typenetwork.com still has several coppies of Wikipedia, including almost the entire site typeencyclopedia.com. It uses a very old, outdated version of Wikipedia. LDan 04:09, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Type United Kingdom

  • No link to original wikipedia article
  • No GFDL link
  • standard letter sent by LDan
  • The same network as typesyria.
Wikipedia printable version
  • Links to current Wikipedia article, but not at the stable URL (not a clickable link either)
  • No GFDL link
  • I think we should send the developers the standard letter - I already submitted a feature request and mentioned this issue on their mailing list; no response whatsoever. It is very important that the printable version is OK per our copyright since that is a nice clean HTML copy of an article. --mav 10:46, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)
  • Works now. :) Martin 14:27, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • What does this mean? +sj+ 16:20, 2004 Mar 28 (UTC)


Vagabond Poet

  • No mention of Wikipedia except in HTML page title.
  • Links back to Wikipedia article.
  • No mention of GFDL.
  • Sample article: Albania - http://www.vagabondpoet.com/infopedia/al/Albania.html
  • Says "Copyright 2003 Brenda Buckley All Rights Reserved."
  • Links to ruv.net, see infopedia.ruv.net above.
  • Contact listed on page, Brenda Buckley:
    • bb(at)ruv.net
    • vagabondpoet@hotmail.com

VoyageNow.com

  • Does not acknowledge wikipedia authorship, links to wikipedia
  • States that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL.
  • Does not link to the relevant wikipedia page (or wikipedia at all)
  • GNU/FDL link does not go to English the text of the GNU/FDL, but to a copy of the Japanese Wikipedia page on the GNU GPL
  • Example: [32] from List of Canadian Ministers of Finance.
  • Contact: mailto:securevoyagenow@voyagenow.com
  • I'm also going after this one, again articles of mine have been copied, leading to particular annoyance. Standard letter sent. David Newton 17:59, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
    • Second standard letter sent. David Newton 00:34, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

WikiMD.org

  • Uses Wikipedia content on a large scale by copying and pasting.
  • Has no links to or mention of Wikipedia.
  • States that all text is available under the GFDL.
  • Example: Psychiatry and wikiMD:Psychiatry

I believe that if it were possible for them to import our page history they would. They use MediaWiki 1.2.4. When our developers get Import page working, hopefully they will be able to upgrade and import all the page histories required for the GFDL. Guanaco 18:42, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

yourencyclopedia.net

  • I don't know if this web site has already been recorded somewhere in Wikipedia, but I came across an exact copy of a Wikipedia article (although it was an old version, from somewhere down the edit history) as a #1 Google hit. The nasty thing about this site is that our links do work. However, red links are not shown, and if you click on one you are all of a sudden right on a Wikipedia edit page. This is an invitation to vandalize Wikipedia, but I was unable to find an e-mail address. <KF> 00:14, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
  • This is a mirror of Wikipedia. It mentions the GFDL and Wikipedia once on its main page, but none of the articles have a list of authors or links to the Wikipedia pages. Guanaco 23:52, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Huh? I just looked at a few articles and they all had this at the bottom of the page, with links: "This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia - see source." ←Hob 00:00, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

vietnam-war.info

  • Uses wikipedia content
  • No link to wikipedia, nor mention of it
  • No other source information
  • No GFDL mention
  • Lots of ads
  • "The contents of this web site are Copyright © 2003 Otherground, LLC and Vietnam-War.info.

All Rights Reserved. Please review our Privacy Policy."

Old lengthy discussions

(but not obsolete yet)

Greatsite discussion

Similarities with Wikipedia's Martin Luther passage:
  • [33] appearts to be based on Martin Luther. If you look at the history of our article (for example, the creation of the second paragraph of the "Exile at the Wartburg Castle" section in [34]), it seems to have been built up piece-by-piece, so I think it's pretty clear that they've copied us rather than the other way round. Camembert
  • Sent the standard letter. --snoyes 02:49, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • As the one who started this whole thread, I believe the evidence is more consistent with either Wikipedia copying this site or both copying a third source (hopefully public domain). The problem was introduced in the 18:18, 01 July 2003 revision; see the new sections "struggle to find peace with God", "Warburg Castle" and "Luther's writings" which are almost verbatim quotes. It is quite possible both were taken from a 3rd source (since it reads like the work of a scholar or theologian) but google did not find it. GreatSite.com lists a specific author with its copyright, and is willing to let the work be reproduced with credit (scroll to bottom). Joelwest 01:54, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • But much of the content we had before that July 1 edit is included in the greatsite version as well. For example, compare the beginning of greatsite's "Martin Luther and Judaism" section with the penultimate paragraph of this Wikipedia version of January 7, 2002. They are nearly the same. So if the Wikipedia version has been copied from another source (either greatsite itself or a shared third-party publication), then it's been copied in bits and pieces by many different people in many edits over the course of two years. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly. More likely, greatsite has copied a Wikipedia version and edited it a bit. Don't underestimate the ability of Wikipedia contributors to write like scholars or theologians - some of them are. --Camembert
  • I have ruled out the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopediaand the Catholic Encyclopedia as the source of both articles; see the Luther stories at CCEL.org. Joelwest 01:58, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
  • Possible GFDL violation by greatsites. The 05:51, 9 Aug 2003 Melanchthon correction is present there. The 00:45, 30 Sep 2003 Pope Leo III to X correction isn't, so the copying seems to have happened between those two dates. The remaining edits between those dates don't help to narrow it down further. Lots of other corrections and edits prior to 9 Aug are at greatsites, so I conclude that it almost had to have been after that 9 Aug edit. In more detail: greatsites.com appears not to have had much coverage of Martin Luther on 2003-02-06 [35]. Regrettably there is no more recent archived copy of that site to compare with. The Luther's German Bible section is present and that was added at 20:26, 25 Jun 2003 so the copying seems to have happened after then. There's an extra sentence in the copy which doesn't seem to have ever been present in a copy of ours and the 1922 date differs from ours as well. Luther's early life was expanded at 17:47, 5 Jul 2003, including a mention of a copper mine starting from this 17:47, 5 Jul 2003 edit so the copying happened after this edit. this 14:17, 6 Jul 2003 edit changes text from "a few days later" to "the next day" and greatsites has that change. The changes in the 21:02, 8 Jul 2003 edit at the start of this examination are present. Until this 15:04, 11 Jul 2003 edit our text contained "From the viewpoint of the Roman Catholic Church". The greatsites version doesn't contain that, suggesting that the copying happened after this edit. Until this 18:34, 11 Jul 2003 edit our text contained "called to testify". The edit changed it to "summoned to either renounce or reaffirm them" and greatsites contains this change. The edits of 19:43, 11 Jul 2003 are present at greatsites. The Eck change of 21:47, 11 Jul 2003 is present at greatsites. The 18:28, 30 Jul 2003 near to nearby change suggests copying after this edit. The first of the 18:39, 30 Jul 2003 edits is present. The 07:31, 31 Jul 2003 changes are present, so it was after this. The 05:51, 9 Aug 2003 Melanchthon correction is present. Jamesday 10:39, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Here is a second example of similar text between Greatsite.com and Wikipedia:
  • Their Tyndale article has wording in it that was made to the old encyclopedia article on wikipedia by an anon user: [36]. Again it should be clear that they copied from us and not the other way arround. --snoyes 06:33, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(low_degree_of_compliance)&oldid=7119442"