[NetBehaviour] Wikipedia challenges "Wikipedia Art"

[Scott Kildall]

Hi everyone,

I have been keeping quiet about this development until today.

A brief history: On February 14th, 2009, Nathaniel Stern and I  
launched the Wikipedia Art intervention on Wikipedia, which generated  
knots of discussion on what was deemed encyclopedia-worthy. The full  
archive of this project is at www.wikipediaart.org.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a letter from the Wikimedia legal counsel  
(they run Wikipedia) which challenged the Wikipedia Art project  
(specifically the domain name, which I was the registrant of) on the  
grounds of trademark infringement since we were using the "Wikipedia"  
name in the project. This is despite the fact that the project is a  
non-commercial commentary of Wikipedia.

Here is an article written by Corynne McSherry from the Electronic  
Frontier Foundation on the Wikimedia action, in support of the  
Wikipedia Art project:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-

And this is a brief legal history along with a personal statement that  
we put up on the site:
http://wikipediaart.org/legal-history/

It certainly has been an interesting few weeks and in my various  
consultations with lawyers, I have learned a *lot* about intellectual  
property and cyberlegal issues.

Best wishes,
Scott Kildall
www.kildall.com