Amazon takes Wikipedia pages shopping

Amazon has launched a new feature in the US that brings content from Wikipedia pages to its own servers in a new project that appears to be called 'Shopping Enabled Wikipedia Pages.'

Hosted on the Amazon.com domain, the pages replicate Wikipedia's content but have added links to where a book can be purchased on Amazon. "Shopping-enabled Wikipedia pages are a new introduction on Amazon.com," Amazon spokeswoman Anya Waring told ZDNet UK's sister site CNET News when asked via email. "As of November, we have rolled [the feature] out in the books category; however, [it] will be expanding to new categories in 2011." Amazon image

The new feature is not the result of an official partnership, Waring explained. Amazon's use of the content is licensed under Creative Commons, the alternative to traditional copyright that Wikipedia uses for all of its user-sourced encyclopedia content. At the bottom of a 'Shopping Enabled Wikipedia Page', a message explains: "The article appearing above is from Wikipedia... The Wikipedia content may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence, version 3.0 or any later version."

For more on this story, read Amazon adds Wikipedia to book-shopping pages on CNET News.