Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge - Springergate: Systematic “copyglitch” appropriation of Wikimedia content « petermr's blog

[Use the link to access the full blog post including the images discussed below and comments on the post.]  “I have communicated with Wikip(m)edia over the apparent systematic relicensing and relabeling of their content into ‘SpringerImages’. It’s fair to say that the individuals I have heard from are seriously upset. The action is clearly a breach of copyright and therefore illegal in most jurisdictions.  The problem is that Wikip(m)edia are not the owners of the content. So they can’t do anything legally.  But they can and should and will (I hope) make a public fuss. They have suggested blogging it (and Wikipedia carries a great deal of public opinion).  So I have: [1] Searched http://springerimages.com for “Wikipedia”. This will only give results where the string ‘Wikipedia’ is in the caption, and there are probably >>10 times more than won’t have this. But this gave 350 hits. Therefore I assume there are thousands of Wikipedia images badged as ‘SpringerImages’. [2] Looked for the licensor. In some cases this is not Springer, so I assume it is a publisher which is either owned by Springer or where they have an agreement with Springer. Note that the material taken from Wiley and PLoS is relicensed as Springer’s. I have omitted any material which does not have ‘Springer’ in the licensor. [3] Copied the results to this page for the first ten I found. I have found NO (ZILCH, NADA in Neylon-speak) entries which honour the original licensee. I therefore hypothesize that ‘ALL your open content are belong to SPRINGER’.  I shall continue.  No doubt Springer will say ‘terribly sorry, it was a glitch’. It’s a very profitable glitch for them. They resell other people’s content and build up a brand from it. When it goes wrong they can say ‘sorry’.  For me this is similar to the infamous fake journals published by Elsevier  UPDATE: Daniel Mietchen (Wikimedia/OKFN) has just mailed me – a special page that WP uses for recording violations. It contains the phrase: ‘Sometimes, media organizations just don’t understand that in most cases, you just can’t rip an image off Commons and just use it.’  Well, Springer, you had better understand that right now. Because you have spent enough time telling US what we cannot do...”