Plagiarism

#1

Post by endtwist » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:10 PM UTC

Plagiarism
notes.unwieldy.net

Re: Plagiarism

#2

Post by destraynor » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

I've experienced this and I sympathise with you. I don't know the specifics of this case, so my comment from here on is about the general practise of content theft and barely-there attribution.

This is unfortunately a way of life for many of the larger tech sites, and will be until they adapt or suffer their inevitable faith.

For every one person who linked up my Android vs Condom post (which went hyper-viral), 10 more stole the images and put in a tiny gray on white text link somewhere at the bottom of the post. And these weren't no name sites, they were big 200K+ reader sorta sites.

There are a small number of respectable people who link to a site with the genuine intention of sending traffic its way (Daringfireball would be one of them). The remainder do their absolute best to hide it, as you noted, some only do it when called out.

Re: Plagiarism

#3

Post by petercooper » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings.

However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the structure and the way those facts were originally expressed. The original TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy of the original paragraphs.

What bothers me more, though, is that seemingly a CEO of a media organization has failed to do any damage control based around a genuine grievance (that wasn't even aggressively delivered). Saying things like "think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this", "needless to say, we'll be staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future for fear of ridiculous reaction" and using "u do realise that about 50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications right?" as a sort of defence is a horrible PR line for a proprietor to play, even if that's his honest opinion.

Re: Plagiarism

#4

Post by laconian » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.

Re: Plagiarism

#5

Post by acoyfellow » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

laconian wrote: post #4

I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.

It's unfortunate but true. These were my thoughts exactly. I can see the situation from both sides.

Re: Plagiarism

#6

Post by Ahmes » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

I'm pretty sure there is an XKCD about this.

Didn't we conclude yesterday that there was a fundamental flaw in the original author's assumptions in how tips get reported and preliminary evidence suggests Taxi drivers are now making less?

Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it may legitimately be cited as fact in a Wikipedia article.

Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it will probably also go as an unquestioned anecdote in a thousand VC pitches.

Re: Plagiarism

#7

Post by jgmmo » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:42 PM UTC

Sorry man, I read that article and thought it's insights were profound. I am sorry to hear that they basically just 'spun' your hard work. Doesn't seem fair that you do the hard work but they end up with the lions share of the hits...

To SEO Experts: Should they have given the original author a 'canonical' link from that page? Would that have helped matters SEO wise?

Re: Plagiarism

#8

Post by binarydud » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:43 PM UTC

And people still wonder why publications like these aren't considered serious purveyors of content. The goal isn't to spread information and break stories, instead it's to get eyeballs and sell advertisements.

Re: Plagiarism

#9

Post by zeedotme » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875

Zee from TNW here.

Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here.

I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste.

We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

Re: Plagiarism

#10

Post by Braasch » Mon, May 14, 2012, 7:47 PM UTC

zeedotme wrote: post #9

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which…

The author should have put quotes around the paragraphs that were blatantly copy and only slightly tweaked to show it came directly from the piece and wasn't written by Harrison.

Oh, and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.