Sunday, May 3, 2009

Wikipedia Founder Slams Wikipedia Art

Some controversy stirred up earlier this week after the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in on behalf of the creators of Wikipediaart.org, a site dedicated to a Wikipedia-related art project. The EFF was responding to demands by a lawyer for the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company of Wikipedia, that the artists turn over control of the domain.

Claims that the domain violated Wikimedia's trademark and the ensuing legal back and forth have renewed the debate over fair use and free speech, and to an extent, what constitutes art. There's even a bit of a debate over what constitutes "a threat."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales characterizes the project as "an alleged bit of performance art," and the project creators, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, as "trolls" "dedicated to vandalizing Wikipedia as a publicity stunt." [His full statement is available as an update to an earlier article, linked below.]

The project originally took place on the Wikipedia site itself, but was quickly deleted by Wikipedia editors. Though there was some debate over whether a collaborative art project had a place in an online encyclopedia, the final agreement was that the project—also thought to be critical of Wikipedia itself—was a form of vandalism.

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