When a newspaper “rips off” your blog, then taunts you about it…(iandennismiller.com)
iandennismiller.com
When a newspaper “rips off” your blog, then taunts you about it…
http://iandennismiller.com/blog/2011/03/total-bummer-longislandpress-com-plagiarism-and-coverup/
15 comments
The conclusion I draw from these two examples is that the Washington Post is a much more ethical company than the Long Island Press. I really, honestly believe that if a Post reporter was caught lifting paragraphs from a blog the repercussions would have been the same. Likewise if an LIP reporter lifted paragraphs from another print publication.
I suspect they are more ethical because there are more consequences.
You're right, but you're also not distinguishing finely enough. Pulling text directly from somebody else's story (even with minor modifications) is a deadly no-no if you get caught. But that isn't what happened here. She didn't copy one paragraph from his story — she just took his facts and wrote her own story around them. Basically, she treated the blog post as a lead rather than a source. It's generally seen as a lesser crime, if they think of it as a crime at all — I know some newspapers actually encourage it — and it's far more common.
Plagarism isn't just taking things word for word, if you take anyone's ideas without permission, YOU ARE STEALING. Furthermore, this author didn't even bother cross checking the blog post with any source. If something is common knowledge then you would have a case, at it is obviously not the case here, this is pure and simple plagarism. Re-using the exact same image is just insult to injury.
The main issue here is they had the opportunity to cite the source before and afterword with a simple and free link. Instead they thought they would be Gob and just rewrite history, too bad for them they are not exactly bright with journalism or technology. Negative publicity is a given, but they deserve worse for all covering up this dipsh*t did after the fact.
The main issue here is they had the opportunity to cite the source before and afterword with a simple and free link. Instead they thought they would be Gob and just rewrite history, too bad for them they are not exactly bright with journalism or technology. Negative publicity is a given, but they deserve worse for all covering up this dipsh*t did after the fact.
>if you take anyone's ideas without permission, YOU ARE STEALING.
Plagiarism isn't [generally] a crime. There is no general legal protection for artistic ideas (patents usually have a clause requiring industrial application; copyright protects works and not ideas per se). In addition - and this makes me think you're trolling - using another persons idea isn't stealing unless you do something like electroshock therapy to remove that idea from their memory. Stealing requires that something is taken and then can't be used any longer by whomever it was taken from; you can't steal an idea.
>Re-using the exact same image is just insult to injury.
The original and subsequent use appear to be [copyright] infringing use of an image which from what I can tell is the original work of the owners of petitelapgiraffe.com. Certainly if iandennismiller.com has any default right to use it then too does longislandpress.com.
I can't access the original cache but from the rest of what is presented this just looks like Mr Miller wrote a blog post that a journo read, journo wrote a story on the same thing referencing the same source; TBH I can't see the fault in that. Whilst it would have been nice to credit the reference that gave one the source I don't really see it as unethical not to.
Plagiarism isn't [generally] a crime. There is no general legal protection for artistic ideas (patents usually have a clause requiring industrial application; copyright protects works and not ideas per se). In addition - and this makes me think you're trolling - using another persons idea isn't stealing unless you do something like electroshock therapy to remove that idea from their memory. Stealing requires that something is taken and then can't be used any longer by whomever it was taken from; you can't steal an idea.
>Re-using the exact same image is just insult to injury.
The original and subsequent use appear to be [copyright] infringing use of an image which from what I can tell is the original work of the owners of petitelapgiraffe.com. Certainly if iandennismiller.com has any default right to use it then too does longislandpress.com.
I can't access the original cache but from the rest of what is presented this just looks like Mr Miller wrote a blog post that a journo read, journo wrote a story on the same thing referencing the same source; TBH I can't see the fault in that. Whilst it would have been nice to credit the reference that gave one the source I don't really see it as unethical not to.
You make assumptions instead of reading what is written.
He said it is plagiarism, then affirms again that t is stealing. This is the generally accepted definition of plagarism. He doesn't accuse anyone of a crime, if he had maybe he would have used words like fraud or copyright infringement, or something along those lines, instead he said plagiarize; and as other have commented, plagiarism doesn't necessarily constitute copyright infringement and vice versa.
And then you proceeded to take the insult to injury comment out of context, in context he meant that obviously this author who plagiarized didn't even care enough to find out if someone owned the image either, or further that it had apparently been edited by the blogger in question. No claims were made about copyright infringement whatsoever, but it showed a significant lack of due diligence even further so then simply plagiarizing the article.
So now that I am done refering to myself in 3rd person. I would absolutely love to take a lesson out of your book and assume you are something based on what you write (or don't write) out of context and make myself feel 5 times better, but your not worth it.
And yes you can steal an idea, people get thrown out of higher education everyday for stealing someone's idea.
And if negative karma is the consequence of well worded opinion, then I haven't a clue why anyone would want positive karma.
He said it is plagiarism, then affirms again that t is stealing. This is the generally accepted definition of plagarism. He doesn't accuse anyone of a crime, if he had maybe he would have used words like fraud or copyright infringement, or something along those lines, instead he said plagiarize; and as other have commented, plagiarism doesn't necessarily constitute copyright infringement and vice versa.
And then you proceeded to take the insult to injury comment out of context, in context he meant that obviously this author who plagiarized didn't even care enough to find out if someone owned the image either, or further that it had apparently been edited by the blogger in question. No claims were made about copyright infringement whatsoever, but it showed a significant lack of due diligence even further so then simply plagiarizing the article.
So now that I am done refering to myself in 3rd person. I would absolutely love to take a lesson out of your book and assume you are something based on what you write (or don't write) out of context and make myself feel 5 times better, but your not worth it.
And yes you can steal an idea, people get thrown out of higher education everyday for stealing someone's idea.
And if negative karma is the consequence of well worded opinion, then I haven't a clue why anyone would want positive karma.
> And yes you can steal an idea, people get thrown out of higher education everyday for stealing someone's idea.
No, they get thrown out for doing something against the rules of the school. The fact that they get thrown out does not prove that an idea was meaningfully stolen (as opposed to the simpler explanation, in which the student experienced a lapse of integrity in following citation requirements).
A thought experiment: If I believe that we have a duty to repay society for all that it has done for us, then in order not to be a thief, am I required to raise Immanuel Kant from the dead and ask him for permission every time I want to bring it up in conversation? Obviously, no. I'm allowed to believe the same thing as Immanuel Kant and it is not theft. If I got my ideas from Kant but tried to deny it, that would be dishonest, and he would still be the originator, but ideas aren't really property.
This isn't defending what the Long Island Press did, but you're going too far in the other direction.
No, they get thrown out for doing something against the rules of the school. The fact that they get thrown out does not prove that an idea was meaningfully stolen (as opposed to the simpler explanation, in which the student experienced a lapse of integrity in following citation requirements).
A thought experiment: If I believe that we have a duty to repay society for all that it has done for us, then in order not to be a thief, am I required to raise Immanuel Kant from the dead and ask him for permission every time I want to bring it up in conversation? Obviously, no. I'm allowed to believe the same thing as Immanuel Kant and it is not theft. If I got my ideas from Kant but tried to deny it, that would be dishonest, and he would still be the originator, but ideas aren't really property.
This isn't defending what the Long Island Press did, but you're going too far in the other direction.
Actually, it looks like the journalist neglected to cite any source initially, and when he called her on it, she went and did the WHOIS search he described so she could claim to have done that research herself — and then deleted the bit about the image being stock art, since apparently she didn't know how to re-discover that information and was unwilling to use him as a source.
I've caught lots of journalists plagiarizing, including Chris Hedges, and none of them have ever gotten fired. I even caught our state senator Toni Boucher plagiarizing an article she 'wrote', and it's not like she was forced to step down.
I'm sure folks do get fired for plagiarism, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule, where mostly no one cares until the complaints start getting loud enough.
I'm sure folks do get fired for plagiarism, but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule, where mostly no one cares until the complaints start getting loud enough.
[deleted]
You say that you don't really want anyone to get fired over this. It's a noble attitude, and I admire it.
I am a college professor, and even though I observe at the end of each term that some of my students have failed to learn anything, I don't really want anyone to fail.
However, ...
I am a college professor, and even though I observe at the end of each term that some of my students have failed to learn anything, I don't really want anyone to fail.
However, ...
Reminds of of this case, which happened to famous CS blogger Scott Aaronson:
Australian actresses are plagiarizing my quantum mechanics lecture to sell printers: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=277
tl;dr of the article: Someone created an Australian commercial for a printer. Two models are talking physics/CS to each other, and the tagline is "A more intelligent model". The models' script is copied from one of Scott Aaronson's lectures.
I think he ended up contacting them, and getting them to donate $5,000 to a CS foundation (instead of sewing them for copyright violations).
Australian actresses are plagiarizing my quantum mechanics lecture to sell printers: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=277
tl;dr of the article: Someone created an Australian commercial for a printer. Two models are talking physics/CS to each other, and the tagline is "A more intelligent model". The models' script is copied from one of Scott Aaronson's lectures.
I think he ended up contacting them, and getting them to donate $5,000 to a CS foundation (instead of sewing them for copyright violations).
Sounds like even without legal action, the case was /sewn/ shut!
It strikes me as kind of strange that some newspapers have absolutely no problem citing tweets as sources of information, but are too proud to admit they got a fact from a blogger.
Tweets imply immediacy, crowd witness, etc. While blogs imply longer writing, research & fact-checking. Quoting a tweet is like quoting a dude in a crowd, but a bloger is someone doing the same thing as you. No one ever got caught in a public riot and wrote an essay about it on the spot, but they tweet about it.
There is no more research or fact-checking implied by a blog than by a series of tweets. There is only longer writing.
> It strikes me as kind of strange that some newspapers have absolutely no problem citing tweets as sources of information
That disease struck CNN extremely hard. It is not a news organization anymore - it just aggregates second and third hand hearsay from twitter. (Al Jazeera or Sky news tends to be better...)
That disease struck CNN extremely hard. It is not a news organization anymore - it just aggregates second and third hand hearsay from twitter. (Al Jazeera or Sky news tends to be better...)
Tweets are just people talking; blogs are the newspaper industry's competition.
>"but are too proud to admit they got a fact from a blogger."
Too proud? Where do you get that from.
As I see it someone looked at the blog post, clicked through to the petitelapgiraffe.com site and wrote about that site.
If they should write:
Source: petitelapgiraffe.com Referred from: iandennismiller.com
Should they also write who they were referred to iandennismiller.com from, who referred them there, etc., etc..
If they saw the story elsewhere first and then scouted around to see what people were writing about it, looking for an angle, then do they still need to write a "referred by" line? If they looked over someones shoulder on the metro and saw the original site do they have to cite that?
Just seems a bit silly.
Too proud? Where do you get that from.
As I see it someone looked at the blog post, clicked through to the petitelapgiraffe.com site and wrote about that site.
If they should write:
Source: petitelapgiraffe.com Referred from: iandennismiller.com
Should they also write who they were referred to iandennismiller.com from, who referred them there, etc., etc..
If they saw the story elsewhere first and then scouted around to see what people were writing about it, looking for an angle, then do they still need to write a "referred by" line? If they looked over someones shoulder on the metro and saw the original site do they have to cite that?
Just seems a bit silly.
[deleted]
I applaud you for pushing the English language forward with new words like "kindof".
(I'm actually not being sarcastic. "Kind of" as a concept is one we use so frequently it might as well have its own word)
(I'm actually not being sarcastic. "Kind of" as a concept is one we use so frequently it might as well have its own word)
Yes, it is not a news-flash that the bulk of modern "journalists" are, for the most part, low paid college grads who lack the ethical standards of journalism in which their forebears prided themselves.
But there are still plenty of serious journalists out there. Thankfully, in the Internet age, we can be choosy where we get our news.
But there are still plenty of serious journalists out there. Thankfully, in the Internet age, we can be choosy where we get our news.
Regarding the ethical standards of earlier generations of journalists and copying, see INS v AP, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) where INS rewrote large numbers of news articles they acquired from AP through bribery and other means, without attribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._A...
This is the origin of the "hot news" idea of short-term copyright, balancing the effort of the original writer with the public's need to know the news.
The linked scenario, however, is quite different.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_News_Service_v._A...
This is the origin of the "hot news" idea of short-term copyright, balancing the effort of the original writer with the public's need to know the news.
The linked scenario, however, is quite different.
Don't be so sure. Many plagiarists have old-school journalism backgrounds. Last year, the "Cooks Source" editor in Western Mass. copy and pasted much of the content in her magazine from Internet sources before getting caught, and had gotten her start at The Voice decades before (see http://mashable.com/2010/11/06/cooks-source/ ). Earlier in my career, one of my colleagues was fired for lifting from Wikipedia, who was also from an old-school newspaper background. Many more examples of this.
- E-mailing de masse -
Tout comme vous je reçois chaque jour une bonne centaine d’E-mails publicitaires. Cela ne me dérange pas trop outre mesure, et je ne fais pas partie de ceux qui hurlent immédiatement au spam loin de la. Les éliminer me prend tout au plus une minute car sur G-mail il y a un petit " carré " qui marche très bien, mais parmi eux, il y en a certains qui m’intéressent quand même , car ils proposent des produits ou des trucs et des bidules et autres machins qui pourraient parfaitement figurer dans mon catalogue web ( c'est à dire ma corbeille )..... http://webboutiquevelane19.blogspot.com/
Tout comme vous je reçois chaque jour une bonne centaine d’E-mails publicitaires. Cela ne me dérange pas trop outre mesure, et je ne fais pas partie de ceux qui hurlent immédiatement au spam loin de la. Les éliminer me prend tout au plus une minute car sur G-mail il y a un petit " carré " qui marche très bien, mais parmi eux, il y en a certains qui m’intéressent quand même , car ils proposent des produits ou des trucs et des bidules et autres machins qui pourraient parfaitement figurer dans mon catalogue web ( c'est à dire ma corbeille )..... http://webboutiquevelane19.blogspot.com/
I see this sort of plagiarism occur all of the time, for all sources of media and from different mediums. Very often without any sort of citation used for the original source. I don't think providing a link is adequate at all times either, as that one article that goes viral in a sense could be the one that makes your blog gain that needed popularity for success. If everyone views your work on another site your blog doesn't get all of those valuable hits. All in all I don't know how this problem could be policed.
For future references, here is a great resource for future plagiarism woes: http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/.
Ahh it all make sense now. Lots of these news articles come from slashdot
[deleted]
Plagiarism? Really? They didn't copy the text of the article, did they? They wrote their own, based on the original source. That's hardly unusual. I'm not even sure it's unethical. At most it warrants an attribution, but this witch-hunt is way over the top.
Copying text (or close paraphrasing) == Copyright Problem
Using someone's ideas/text/research without attribution is plagiarism.
They are two different considerations, commonly confused. You can violate copyright without plagiarising, and you can plagiarise without breaking copyright.
It's an ethical consideration, certainly, unfortunately it is so persuasive nowadays that no one does anything much but shrug and say "yep, aren't they rude"
Using someone's ideas/text/research without attribution is plagiarism.
They are two different considerations, commonly confused. You can violate copyright without plagiarising, and you can plagiarise without breaking copyright.
It's an ethical consideration, certainly, unfortunately it is so persuasive nowadays that no one does anything much but shrug and say "yep, aren't they rude"
If it were a crime to rewrite/summarize an article without attributing it, about half of TechCrunch would be illegal. Though perhaps the difference is that we expect "real" newspapers to be better.
AFAIK, no one is claiming that plagiarism is a crime. It's just unethical, and those who do it should be called out.
FWIW user 'hazors' is saying this is a case of stealing, ie claiming it to be a crime:
"Plagarism isn't just taking things word for word, if you take anyone's ideas without permission, YOU ARE STEALING."
"Plagarism isn't just taking things word for word, if you take anyone's ideas without permission, YOU ARE STEALING."
Lack of attribution is precisely what TFA is complaining about. Plagiarism is claiming others' work as your own, not necessarily copying. So lack of attribution is really what defines it.
For your own health and well-being, let it go and move on with your life. Your energy could be best spent elsewhere.
Your energy could be best spent doing something other than telling others how to spend their energy.
Kudos to Ian for his detective work, but it is not entirely inconceivable that someone else wouldn't have done exactly the same thing and -- surprise, surprise -- reach exactly the same conclusion. This seems like a bit of an overreaction.
The server logs he mentions at the end of the article are rather convincing (if circumstantial) evidence.
It may not be admissible in a court of law, but it's key evidence in the court of opinion!
Fair enough. I read the article portion, but didn't make it through all the updates at the end.
Bonjours, ce n'est pas un journal chinois pourtant car ils sont les maitres en plagias et autre contrefaçons.
Comme quoi les mauvaises habitudes se prennent très vite.
En france, on n'entant pas encore de pareilles plagias mais je pense que cela ne devrai pas tarder hélas !!!
velane19
http://webboutiquevelane19.blogspot.com/
velane19
http://webboutiquevelane19.blogspot.com/
However, if you just run a website, you are not a journalist and the unwritten rules do not apply. (This is one of the cultural reasons why newspapers cannot conceive of getting out of the dead tree distribution business, even if it is killing them -- that is the source of their power and privilege, after all.)