Wikimedia Foundation replies to Municipalist questions on McCain plagiarism charges

[Update: We develop this further here.]

D.C.-based Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Dan Rosenthal responds to questions from Municipalist about the suggestion that John McCain's speech writers may have "plagiarized" from Wikipedia some material about Georgia and its history. "A Wikipedia editor" makes the charge.

The comments following the initial post at CQ's Political Insider blog are worthy reading. One asks: Can anybody plagiarize facts? And here is a follow-up post, with links to responses from the blogosphere and some mainstream media. Here is the speech. Rosenthal addressed our emailed questions in one reply, but we break them up here:

Municipalist: What is Wikipedia policy on use of its content?

Rosenthal: Wikimedia's policy on use of its content is one of freedom. First, let me note that the Wikimedia Foundation does not own the article content on our projects; the individual authors who write it do. All of their contributions are licensed under the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License), which to summarize allows free reuse, commercially or otherwise, as long as the reuser attributes the preceding authors. It's slightly more complicated than that, but that's the gist of what's important to this question.

So, Sen. McCain, or Sen. Obama, or any other person is more than welcome to use content found on our projects, as long as it is properly attributed. Now, obviously when giving a speech that quotes a line or two from an article, or using a word or two from another source, there's a different story, and there is potentially a fair use argument to be made. That being said, however, in the vast majority of instances we require attribution to the authors of the content.

Keep in mind that we have been saying repeatedly that Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source of information, and people using Wikipedia for research should always verify their information elsewhere.

Municipalist: Apparently a Wikipedia editor emailed this charge to a member of the media. How does Wikipedia feel about this behavior of one of its own?

Rosenthal: There's very little to say. What people do outside of the project is their own business.

Municipalist: If journalists are free to "use" Wikipedia content, why not campaigns?

Rosenthal: Journalists and campaigns are free to use Wikipedia content. Advertisement campaigns have been using our content; why wouldn't a presidential campaign? Now, with that being said, just because they are free to use our content does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea. A presidential candidate and his campaign have significant amounts of staffer time and money invested into research and briefing, and I would sincerely hope that they are able to use Wikipedia responsibly and verify their sources and citations, rather than citing directly to Wikipedia (which is something that we discourage in grade school students, let alone campaigns).

Municipalist: Does Wikipedia care about this?

Rosenthal: Again it is hard to say because the term "Wikipedia" can have different meaning. If you mean the project itself, obviously the answer is no because software cannot care. If you mean the contributors and editors to the project, there has been some discussion about it, but the general response has been pretty apathetic. If you mean the Wikimedia Foundation, there has been very little internal discussion regarding the issue.

In closing, I hope the McCain campaign learns from this, as well as any campaign, organization or person who wants to use content from Wikipedia. Please do so responsibly, make sure your sources are cited, provide proper attribution, and try to use Wikipedia to dig deeper for content beyond just our articles. Doing so will go a long way toward preventing issues like this in the future.

Update: After the initial post, we emailed Rosenthal a follow-up: How does Wikimedia Foundation feel about the overall charge here? Meaning, plagiarism or rights infringement or whatever -- whenever it actually occurs. Regardless of whether it occurred here. Is use of Wikipedia content minus proper attribution a concern for you at all, and do you plan any response to it, educating users, suing, etc.?

Rosenthal: I don't think the Foundation actually has any real feelings about the charge, since there's not a whole lot of solid information at this point. We obviously do not at all support plagiarism when it does in fact occur. Attribution is one of the major keys to our encyclopedia, both for licensing reasons, and because it helps tell the story of the development of an article, as well as gives our contributors a sense of real authorship, so they can say "look what I have helped create." When attribution is taken away, it generally hurts our contributors. So while use of our content minus attribution is a concern for us, and it has been something that has been internally discussed, and sometimes is discussed at outreach events such as Wikimeetups, and Wikimedia Academies, I am not aware of any planned responses at this point in time.

[Calling Internet lawyers: Creative Commons License ruling handing down yesterday.]

[Hat tip: Politico blogger Ben Smith's essential daily remainders.]