Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-02-19/In the news
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In the news
- By Ral315 and BuddingJournalist, 19 February 2007
Legislation's relationship with Wikipedia misconstrued
A recent piece of legislation introduced in the United States Senate would force libraries and schools to block access to "social networking sites". Because the term "social networking" was not defined in the text of the bill, blogs surmised that the bill might force public institutions to ban Wikipedia. In response to the posts, Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Brad Patrick said, "I'm still chuckling over this, only it's *real*. This is REAL LIFE and a REAL US SENATOR (one with a startling ignorance about things technological) offering this bill. We aren't however, commercial, and as long as we stay that way, it will be awfully hard to put us in this category. Shame on the reporters for jumping to the obviously incorrect (but salaciously inflammatory) headline."
Patents increasingly cite Wikipedia
Wikipedia is being cited more and more often by patent authors. A Google patent search shows that 111 patents cite Wikipedia, including patents filed by Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, the University of Illinois, the United States Secretary of the Navy, Lucent, Boeing, Epson, NVIDIA, the United States Secretary of State, Texas Instruments, Lenovo, Nintendo, Airbus, DaimlerChrysler, Carnegie Mellon University, Sony, Sun Microsystems, and the University of California.
Norwegian newspaper linking to Wikipedia
The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet has begun to occasionally add contextual links to Wikipedia within their articles. The links go to articles on persons and concepts mentioned in the article; for example, an article about nominees for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize linked to the articles on Al Gore and Sheila Watt-Cloutier. Another article on Hugo Chávez links to Augusto Pinochet, Canal Metropolitano Televisión, axis of good and axis of evil.
Also this week: From the editor — Arbitrator resigns — Is Wikipedia Failing? — Google traffic — WikiWorld — News and notes — Press coverage — Features and admins — Technology — Arbitration
