A fellow PVB member has brought the following case of shameless rip-off to my attention. He bought a book by “Hephaestus Books” called “Virtual Boy Games, including [ long, incorrect game list…]”, in hopes to find new interesting information about the VB. What he found instead was a bunch of articles directly ripped from Wikipedia… Apparently, they’re doing this with hundreds of thousands of other POD (print on demand) books. If you ever come across any of their crap, AVOID!

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Why did they even bother adding the external links?
This is ridiculous.
They won’t last long when Wikipedia find out.

Thanks for warning

This book… :thumpdown: :thumpdown: :thumpdown:

L___E___T schrieb:
Why did they even bother adding the external links?
This is ridiculous.
They won’t last long when Wikipedia find out.

Actually, they are doing this for thousands of “books” and it is completely legal, as everything that is published on wikipedia is public domain. They also reference all “authors”, external sources and so on. Obviously, this is an automated process and one big scam. All of their covers look similar, so it is not to difficult to identify their books.

No, everything that is published on Wikipedia is *not* public domain. The original authors of the articles hold the copyright and license Wikipedia to display them. There are several licenses typically used, the most common being called “Creative Commons.” Creative Commons, for instance, allows you to use the stuff so long as you attribute the original authors. Public Domain means it is free for all to use without restriction… stuff from Wikipedia has restrictions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_FAQ#Can_I_reuse_Wikipedia.27s_content_somewhere_else.3F

colesonwilson wrote:
No, everything that is published on Wikipedia is *not* public domain. The original authors of the articles hold the copyright and license Wikipedia to display them. There are several licenses typically used, the most common being called “Creative Commons.” Creative Commons, for instance, allows you to use the stuff so long as you attribute the original authors. Public Domain means it is free for all to use without restriction… stuff from Wikipedia has restrictions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_FAQ#Can_I_reuse_Wikipedia.27s_content_somewhere_else.3F

You are right, it is not public domain, it is Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). However, IT allows you to copy everything as long as you name the authors and allow others to copy your stuff:

This requires that, among other things, you attribute the authors and allow others to freely copy your work. (See Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0Unported License and Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License for full details.)

I once contacted Wikipedia and they told me those books are legal.

I’ve seen some auctions on ebay for SG-1000 books. They say in their auctions that the content is from Wikipedia articles, so if you buy the books, it’s your fault.