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Plagiarism

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Re: Plagiarism

#81

Post by hmottestad »

blantonl wrote: post #15
petercooper wrote: post #3

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…

The legal precedence is in the Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service supreme court case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

That case is hardly applicable. It's a copyright claim on phone book entries, otherwise knows as a table of data.

You would still have to cite your sources, even if you copy the data. And any annotations are not part of the dataset. These annotations would ble equivalent to the article text, which was copied pretty much word for word.

Here in Norway they would expel you from all higher education for a minimum of 12 months for such plagiarism.

Re: Plagiarism

#82

Post by evan_ »

mvkel wrote: post #14
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…

"and we decided to just copy/paste" You answered your own question. Also, your reaction to the original author via your public tweets was incredibly unprofessional. If you want to respond with such toxic language, you should so do via a private email. You're the face, the vision, the voice of TNW and I now associate your rude remarks with TNW as a whole.

you should read that again, he was saying that they DIDN'T cut and paste, but the original author reacted as though they had

Re: Plagiarism

#83

Post by moron »

All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it.

The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.

Re: Plagiarism

#84

Post by joering2 »

scott_s wrote: post #59
atakan_gurkan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plagiarism is not about copyright, it is about citing properly. A direct quote has to be indicated as such, a paraphrasing has to include a reference. I learned this in my freshman year in college, this is so basic that an "editor" cannot claim ignorance of these rules.

Fundamentally, plagiarism is about passing someone else's work off as your own. Note that this is possible even if you cite that work .

I love Zee comment when he tries to teach him that 50% of web is a rewrite. What an asshole!

Wonder if an average theft or rapist should be walking around with recent statistics of population being behind bars and why it should be ok to steal or rape.

Re: Plagiarism

#85

Post by peetahb »

ianterrell wrote: post #72
timjahn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do employees (and apparently CEOs) of online tech publications always seem to have so much trouble with basic English grammar/spelling? "I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently" "We work immensely had to product original content"

I have a theory on this point, after witnessing this effect in a few other places (emails from prominent writers, CEOs, etc). Writers write so much that their fear of shipping their writing is diminished through practice, so they write, ship, write, ship, write, ship. They're in creative mode, just putting words on the paper. They're busy, so they go quickly, so that they can get more done. They know that when it mat…

I might have to steal/quote that last line.

"Move fast and break things. Edit later." Perfect.

Re: Plagiarism

#86

Post by jack-r-abbit »

davidw wrote: post #71

Where are all the people defending "piracy" on this post? How much effort were a few paragraphs that got copied vs how much effort does it take to produce a movie, or a professionally recorded song?

Piracy is when it is the little guy stealing from the big guy... and that is ok. This is the big guy stealing from the little guy... and that is bad, mkay? lol

Re: Plagiarism

#87

Post by pwthornton »

You can't copyright facts, but The New Week article didn't have proper citation. In no work of academic writing or real journalism are you allowed to put one link at the bottom and call it a citation.

I would never allow a post at interchangeproject.org to have that sloppy of citations, nor would I allow someone to write there very long if this is what they consider proper attribution. Is it plagiarism? I don't know about that, but the attribution in that post is appalling.

The post is so close to the original that it should have just been one giant block quote. That's not journalism.

Re: Plagiarism

#88

Post by Czarnian »

timjahn wrote: post #16
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…

Why do employees (and apparently CEOs) of online tech publications always seem to have so much trouble with basic English grammar/spelling? "I honestly absolutely no idea what we should have done differently" "We work immensely had to product original content"

Probably the same reason they don't recognize plagiarism when it jumps up and bites them on the ass.

I prescribe a copy of Strunk and White with a healthy dose of proofreading.

Re: Plagiarism

#89

Post by joering2 »

moron wrote: post #83

All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it. The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.

well, perhaps making it a public rant like in this example will make them think twice before next copy/past.

Re: Plagiarism

#90

Post by sebphfx »

tallanvor wrote: post #48
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…

How can you not understand what you should have done differently here? You may have linked to the author's post, but by not quoting him, you were passing his work off as your own to anyone who didn't click through to the link. One of your employees fucked up in the first place, and then you made it worse by not admitting what happened was wrong and apologizing. Had you done so, that would have been the end of it. But…

that's a common problem I've been noticing lately. People can't take the blame when they made a mistake. It's whether they blame someone else or they divert the subject. It's so hard to apologize or say "yes, I did it" and then move on.
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