4 ms·

Every so often in the last n years I stumbled over "books" which simply contain regurgitated wikipedia content. And, of course, all those web pages collecting

by jcynix 4y ago

Every so often in the last n years I stumbled over "books" which simply contain regurgitated wikipedia content. And, of course, all those web pages collecting amazon reviews which simulate product review pages. Or, before that, just link farms to products so people could collect referer compensation. All this is some form of spam, which simply uses search engines to spread instead of email. So the "books" reported here (while somehow "fascinating" just look like the next step of spam/scam evolution to me. And yes, I see that they are more problematic the "better" they get generated, because more people will think they are genuine works.

femto 4y ago
I wrote one of those books. That is, a Wikipedia article I largely wrote was plagiarised and published in a book by a scammer. Some time later my words on Wikipedia were tagged as having been plagiarised from the scammer's book. It was clear from wiki timestamps and publication dates what really happened, so it got fixed, but it's irritating that one needs to waste time on things like that (and as far as I know the book is still on Amazon).
- jcynix 4y ago
  > as far as I know the book is still on Amazon I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share. Knowledge is fungible nowadays, and in these cases of "fake books" its volatile too. It's the virtual gold rush on the Internet and companies which supply resources (ebook platforms, search engines, but hardware for crypto mining like graphics cards etc too) to those "miners" profit from what's going on.
  - hk__2 4y ago
    > I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. The issue then becomes "should Amazon remove low-quality products from their website?" (and the underlying issue is "what does 'low-quality' mean?"), and the response is no because they want to act as a platform.
    - jcynix 4y ago
      > If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. Sure, but I remember seeing books which didn't attribute their source. I only noted the "similarity" while searching for info on certain topics. Sorry, I didn't document them, because I just thought, ok, the next scam.
- sybercecurity 4y ago
  Similar things happened in the past as well. At conferences or trade shows you could find booths selling CDs/DVDs of online content like IETF RFC's, government publications, etc. I could see it as useful for people that had infrequent/spotty network connectivity, but mostly it was preying on people who were unaware of how to obtain these documents on their own. Occasionally you could find print versions as well, which were sometimes a deal if you took the cost of toner/paper into consideration.

by jcynix 4y ago

femto 4y ago

I wrote one of those books. That is, a Wikipedia article I largely wrote was plagiarised and published in a book by a scammer. Some time later my words on Wikipedia were tagged as having been plagiarised from the scammer's book. It was clear from wiki timestamps and publication dates what really happened, so it got fixed, but it's irritating that one needs to waste time on things like that (and as far as I know the book is still on Amazon).

jcynix 4y ago
> as far as I know the book is still on Amazon I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share. Knowledge is fungible nowadays, and in these cases of "fake books" its volatile too. It's the virtual gold rush on the Internet and companies which supply resources (ebook platforms, search engines, but hardware for crypto mining like graphics cards etc too) to those "miners" profit from what's going on.
- hk__2 4y ago
  > I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. The issue then becomes "should Amazon remove low-quality products from their website?" (and the underlying issue is "what does 'low-quality' mean?"), and the response is no because they want to act as a platform.
  - jcynix 4y ago
    > If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. Sure, but I remember seeing books which didn't attribute their source. I only noted the "similarity" while searching for info on certain topics. Sorry, I didn't document them, because I just thought, ok, the next scam.
sybercecurity 4y ago
Similar things happened in the past as well. At conferences or trade shows you could find booths selling CDs/DVDs of online content like IETF RFC's, government publications, etc. I could see it as useful for people that had infrequent/spotty network connectivity, but mostly it was preying on people who were unaware of how to obtain these documents on their own. Occasionally you could find print versions as well, which were sometimes a deal if you took the cost of toner/paper into consideration.