Liability & Legality

**Lpspider** · 07-04-2006, 01:20 AM

First let me clarify - it's okay to use wikipedia content legally, correct?

Now what are some disadvantages of using it other than being penalized for duplicate content?

You see, I'm thinking of using some as "filler" pages until I get the time to write my own content.

Thoughts?

**imported_tom_h** · 07-04-2006, 12:47 PM

You can use wikipedia's content without problems if you stick to the GNU free documentation license. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...tation_License

**Romestar** · 07-04-2006, 12:55 PM

Isn't it legal to use ANY content aslong as you properly quote your source?

**imported_htmlmaster** · 07-04-2006, 12:59 PM

Well... it is wiki, I'm sure you can use it. I would give credit to Wikipedia though.

**imported_tom_h** · 07-04-2006, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Romestar

Isn't it legal to use ANY content aslong as you properly quote your source?

Nope. Any work is automaticly protected by copyright laws, you don't have to do anything for it to gain it. What is allowed is to quote certain phrases of the work (It is in holland, and i'm pretty sure everywhere).

**Romestar** · 07-04-2006, 01:02 PM

I don't know, in English class at school a student asked if you could copy an essay and put in all in quotes and would it be fine? The teacher said yes, but guess what your grade would be? (or something to that effect)

**Fredto** · 07-04-2006, 01:05 PM

In my opinion, since Wikipedia's content is all user filled, you can use it and quote the source.

I can't verify the legality, but since you can edit it to correct mistakes and stuff, it's probably classified as "open source" content.

Following the same rules, of course.

**imported_htmlmaster** · 07-04-2006, 01:05 PM

Quote:

I don't know, in English class at school a student asked if you could copy an essay and put in all in quotes and would it be fine? The teacher said yes, but guess what your grade would be? (or something to that effect)

That's pretty much the reason why everyone doesn't use Wikipedia content for their website content, the "graders" or visitors, wouldn't like it. The thing is, he's only using the content as temporary filler pages.

**Hoang** · 07-04-2006, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tom_h

Nope. Any work is automaticly protected by copyright laws, you don't have to do anything for it to gain it. What is allowed is to quote certain phrases of the work (It is in holland, and i'm pretty sure everywhere).

I think it's called "fair use" in the US.

**Lpspider** · 07-05-2006, 11:19 AM

Okay, so it's perfectly legal. I get that. But what do you think about actually doing it? Will it hurt your site at all?

**Muhammad Haris** · 07-05-2006, 03:55 PM

I wouldn't copy the content and just paste it on my forum, I would rather copy a few lines along with the source to read the whole topic and I believe lots of people use that.

**Lpspider** · 07-05-2006, 04:35 PM

Well, I'm not talking about for forums... for content sites. Information type websites.

**imported_mattd** · 07-05-2006, 05:43 PM

Trouble is its not unique content!

Might be good to base content on it to get some uniqueness.

**Atomm** · 07-07-2006, 03:53 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

This sums it up. Personally, I use bits and pieces of content from other sources, give credit to those sources and add my own thoughts to the articles. This seems to be fine with the search engines as far as I've seen. The key is to be selective and to provide additional value to the article.