Academic journals in Russia are retracting more than 800 papers following a probe into unethical publication practices by a commission appointed by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). The moves come in the wake of several other queries suggesting the vast Russian scientific literature is riddled with plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and so-called gift authorship, in which academics become a co-author without having contributed any work.
The article mentions the findings of Antiplagiat, a plagiarism detection company. Antiplagiat looked at over four million academic articles published in the Russian language, and found that more than 70,000 were published at least twice. Some were reused 17 times. That's an impressively efficient re-cycling of material once it has been written, and saves people the bother of writing new papers, while racking up citations that look good on a CV.
The practice of what is known as "gift authorship" is arguably even more convenient for lazy academics. It involves selling slots on papers already written by other authors that have been accepted by a journal. No work or connection with the research is required. Instead, a site like 123mi.ru acts as a matchmaker between authors willing to sell slots on their articles, and those willing to pay for them. Prices range from around $500 to $3000 per author slot, depending on the subject matter and the journal -- although the latter is only revealed after the slot has been paid for. Some articles allow up to five authors slots to be bought in this way.
Academic publishing in Russia clearly has some serious problems, which undermine its value as a measure of scholarly achievement. Sadly, the same could be said about academic publishing in the West, albeit for different reasons.
]]>And, yet, the Trump campaign did exactly that. If the Center were so inclined, it could argue that this is pretty blatant copyright infringement (its website says that the content is covered by copyright, and it doesn't seem to use an open license like Creative Commons, even though it probably should). There is, at least, a strong argument of fair use here, given the nature of what's being done here -- but it's not exactly a slam dunk. Of course, it also leads to some oddities, because, in the rush to copy, the Trump campaign seems to have left in references to the Center itself or charts that weren't copied as well:
One post, titled "Help Wanted: 4,000 Presidential Appointments," refers to a "chart below" — but the version on Trump's site has no chart. On the center's website, those lines are followed by a detailed interactive graphic showing the positions requiring Senate confirmation in the departments of Justice and State.But that's not the only copyright problem here. There's also the fact that GreatAgain.gov has its own copyright notice, in which it is using a Creative Commons license -- and specifically the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, which is pretty permissive. But, of course, it can't actually claim copyright on the Center's material that it just up and copied.Another page on Trump's site, titled "The Offices and Agencies Supporting the Transition," is exactly the same as a page on the nonprofit's site — including a reference to "our own Center library." Both versions link to the nonprofit's online resource.
On the nonprofit group's site, the two posts are accompanied by the name of the Partnership for Public Service staffer who wrote them. There is no such attribution on the Trump site.
And then there's the separate question of can the Trump transition team actually claim any copyright at all? After all, as we've discussed many times, works of the federal government are not subject to copyright protection. But... is the transition site a work of the federal government? That seems like a pretty big gray area, though there's a strong argument that it's not. Yes, the website is hosted on .gov, and everyone knows these people will be the federal government in a few months, they're not technically part of the federal government yet. And given that copyright law already allows the federal government to hold the copyright on works created by outside parties and then assigned to the federal government, it seems most likely that the transition team would be seen as outside the federal government for now.
Of course, it's unlikely that any of this will matter. The Center for Presidential Transition doesn't seem that concerned about the copying, and one hopes that there aren't going to be any issues concerning the copyright status of the transition website, but since there has basically been zero discussion at all about the new administration's position on copyright, watching how it handles these kinds of situations is important. ]]>
The details here do matter. The defendant, lawyer Ezra Sutton, had worked alongside Newegg in one of the many patent troll lawsuits. Sutton was representing another company sued in the same lawsuit as Newegg by a patent troll, Adjustacam. They had won the case against the troll, and both Newegg and the company Sutton represented, Sakar International, filed motions seeking attorneys' fees. Here's where things get iffy on Sutton's part, as described by Alison Frankel via the Reuters link above:
As Newegg general counsel Lee Cheng recounts the story, he told Sutton early on that Newegg would be willing to file a joint brief with Sakar if Sakar paid a share of the legal fees. Sutton said no thanks, but, as the filing deadline approached, he came back to Newegg. Cheng agreed to show Sutton a draft of the brief Newegg intended to submit to the Federal Circuit to help him write a complementary brief for Sakar.So, first off, what a shitty thing to do by Sutton. I think that's pretty clear. At the very least it potentially would have made a mess for Newegg who would have looked bad filing a nearly identical brief to Sutton's after he did. But, then there's the question of what to do about it. Newegg decided to sue Sutton for copyright infringement -- and this is where I'm a lot less comfortable with Newegg's decision. I think it's the wrong move.
Instead, the day before Newegg’s brief was due, Sutton filed a brief that was largely copied from Newegg’s draft. When Newegg realized what he’d done and protested the filing, Sutton withdrew the brief and subsequently filed a shorter version focused on Sakar’s argument.
We've actually discussed the question of whether or not legal briefs should be subject to copyright before. A few years ago, some lawyers sued the big legal publishing companies, Westlaw and LexisNexis, for republishing briefs when they published compendiums of cases. That was ridiculous, and thankfully the court tossed out the lawsuit, finding that the republishing in this case was easily fair use.
Admittedly the facts in Newegg's case against Sutton are very different. This isn't republishing dockets for lawyers and scholars to access and review. The situation here seemed more like plagiarism, with Sutton more or less trying to take credit for Newegg's work (which had the knock on effect of potentially making Newegg look bad). And I get all of that, but it still troubles me that copyright was the tool here. It feels inappropriate. Copyright is supposed to be about the incentives to create. And no one needs a copyright incentive to create a legal brief -- something that Newegg's Cheng agreed about when I reached out to him about this case. He more or less admits that they're just using copyright here for a clearly non-copyright purpose. As he told me:
"We didn't file this case for profit or money. It's for principle and justice (corny but those values truly motivate me). However, we do believe that Sutton's action did cause us monetary harm and that we are entitled to remedies, but it clearly wasn't the focus of this suit. This suit was to send a message, strictly directed at unethical and lazy lawyers, to do what they learned in the first year of law school in terms of properly crediting others' work, and to do what anyone with common decency would do. Lawyers should be held to, and should hold themselves to, higher rather than lower standards."I don't disagree with any of that -- but it's still troubling to me that copyright is the tool here, because that's a decidedly non-copyright thing that it's being used for. In fact, this seems to be one of those situations where the complaint is really about plagiarism rather than copyright, but where there's enough overlap that the legal mechanism of copyright is enabled to come into play. I fear that this will then be used by others in even more abusive ways -- though Cheng seems confident that the specific facts of this case would likely limit such a potential result.
I'm even bothered a bit by the fair use analysis here where the judge denied Sutton's fair use claims. I would think that the question of whether or not a legal brief should be covered by copyright would be a pretty big factor here. And the judge does agree that this point weighs somewhat in Sutton's favor (and points to that earlier case). The judge also finds, correctly, that the 4th factor -- the impact on the market -- weighs in favor of Sutton since Newegg doesn't have a market for selling its legal briefs. But while many courts often point to that 4th factor as a key one, this court basically just decides that it doesn't matter as much:
Upon consideration of all four factors, with more weight given to the first and third factors based on the facts, circumstances and particular nature of this case, Sutton did not meet his burden of establishing a prima facie case that his copying of Newegg’s draft brief was fair use.So, yes, he's saying because of the specific facts in this case, but it does feel like -- as is all too often the case in fair use cases -- the judge has basically determined what result he wants, and then weighs the four factors accordingly. Admittedly, this might not be a huge deal. The facts are pretty specific, and plagiarizing is sleazy. But, I'm still troubled with the use of copyright to punish even sleazy behavior if it's not related to the reasons for copyright existing. ]]>
Plagiarism is one of those interesting things where people have wildly different reactions to it -- with some insisting it must be illegal (it's generally not, as there's no law against "plagiarism," though it may violate copyright law in some cases). However, some creative folks have finally begun to recognize that plagiarism can actually be a key element of being creative. Writers Malcolm Gladwell and Jonathan Lethem both wrote long articles more or less defending plagiarism -- with Lethem's article entirely plagiarized from other sources.
That's not to say that all plagiarism is excusable. Passing off another's work as your own is quite reasonably frowned upon in most instances, but what all of these -- including Posner's book -- suggest, is that it's the kind of infraction that doesn't need a legal response, but rather social shaming is actually quite effective at dealing with plagiarists and undermining their own credibility. Posner's book is not a defense of plagiarism by any means. It notes how unethical it can be and the problems associated with plagiarism, but does a nice job putting it into perspective, and noting that the context matters very much. And while there are times when it is clearly not acceptable to plagiarize, there are others where it's clearly a reasonable creative endeavor. ]]>
“I would be shocked if … my sources would talk to [Hersh], given their politics and given the sensitivity that the administration had toward this story.”She notes that after her original post, she was strongly pressured to shut up about the issue, and did so (though she didn't delete her post or tweet).
Either way, in a new post, she seems pissed off that Hersh is getting credit for the story, saying that it's "plagiarism."
Seymour Hersh's story, "The Killing of Bin Laden," in the London Review of Books has a fundamental problem: it's either plagiarism or unoriginal.That's silly. First of all, it's not plagiarism, even if it's not true. Just because he heard the same thing from other sources, that wouldn't make it plagiarism. As for the "not original" claim -- well, who really cares? There's this weird obsession some people have with who "broke" a particular story. But the fact is that the story itself happened to others before whoever reported it learned about it. Yes, breaking a story is a nice thing, but it's weird how some people seem to want to claim "ownership" over a story just because they were the first ones to write about it.If it's fiction--as some have implied, it's plagiarism. If it's true, it's not original. The story was broken here on The Spy Who Billed Me four years ago, in August 2011
Yes, it's interesting that Hillhouse had a very similar story a few years ago -- which may lend some additional credence to Hersh's story -- but being first isn't always the most important thing. Getting the story widely spread seems a lot more important, which is evidenced by the fact that the story is only now "news" -- whereas Hillhouse's version more or less faded away. It seems like yet another case in which people overvalue being "first" as opposed to actually getting something more widely accepted and understood. ]]>
Like Hunter Moore, Trahan and Brittain made a living off the misery of others, hosting explicit photos assumed to be forever secret by those featured in them. All three resided in a particular subset of humanity, existing only to entertain and titillate another subset of humanity located roughly adjacent to these misery merchants.
And like Hunter Moore, these revenge pornsters ran headlong into the legal system. The FTC wrestled Brittain into an unfavorable settlement, while Trahan's supposed rebirth as an actual, presumably useful human being has gone unnoticed.
Or mostly unnoticed. Asher Langton noticed. Chance Trahan thinks he's enough of a draw that people will willingly pay him up to and including $70,000 to pretend to be someone else. Chance Trahan invites potential
Chance Trahan has copied -- in whole -- presentation FAQs and speaking topics [embedded below] from Daymond John's website, replacing little more than Daymond's name and logo with his own. [Original on top, Trahan's knockoff on the bottom.]
Yes, Chance Trahan is so inspirational he can't even bothered to compose his own AV instructions. He's the white Daymond John, only without the talent, drive or provable success. He's everything you could possibly expect from a former revenge porn site operator, including deeply hypocritical.
Much like Craig Brittain, Trahan has a deep -- if completely arbitrary -- respect for people's intellectual property. While the two may have built a small fiefdom using unauthorized photos, they're quick to deny that privilege to others. Brittain issued a DMCA notice a few weeks ago, aimed at delisting articles critical of him, including the FTC's own statement on his settlement. In his notice, he claimed the following, all without the slightest trace of irony:
Unauthorized use of photos of me and other related information. Unauthorized use of statements and identity related information. Unauthorized copying of excerpts from isanybodydown.com. Using photos which are not 'fair use'.Trahan has made similar demands in the past. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)
You are infringing Chance's intellectual property. Please consider this a notice of infringement and a demand that you cease and desist from using Chance and from using any and all intellectual property owned by Chance. Regarding the DMCA, all content of Chance that you use is copyrighted material for which you are using without permission of the copyright owner; namely, Chance. You are also using Chance's registered trademarks without permission.Apparently, doing a name and logo swap isn't infringement. And neither is the use of others' intellectual property without permission -- like, say, in the context of a revenge porn site. Chance Trahan may be trying to reinvent himself as a brand-new, less-evil person, but so far, all he's done is reinvent himself as the Daymond John no one's interested in. The uninitiated may fall for this borrowed persona, but those familiar with Trahan's past will see right through his secondhand alter ego.
There's a lesson to be learned here. 98% of it is: don't be so fucking stupid. The other 2% is this: if you want to make amends for your previous wrongdoings, great. Just don't do it by trying to bury your past (Brittain) or by building a whole "new" persona nearly-completely based on someone else's work and success.
If this pair genuinely wants to go forth and do no (further) evil, that would be great. But so far, both have proven they can't even get out the front door without botching it completely. Fortunately, this time, the damage they're causing is mostly internal. ]]>
Stephen Moignard lives a quiet life in the Coonawarra wine district in South Australia, tending his vineyard and small wine company, the Hundred of Comaum.Moignard survived the turn-of-this-century dotcom bust. He used to have a successful company that installed high-speed internet connections in office buildings, but his fortunes crashed with many others in the early 2000s.
He also beavers away until 4am most mornings writing software for a new business venture which he’s hoping will be a global winner in the internet age.
It detects breaches of international copyright on millions of websites and produces almost instantaneous legal letters of demand.
Now, he's looking to make some money by using an algorithm to hunt down "substantially similar" text across multiple websites and serve demand letters to alleged copyright infringers. His new business is called Plfer, and its detection algorithm bears many similarities to commercial plagiarism detection software, albeit with a few tweaks that allow it to bypass web formatting and other obstacles that might throw off comparisons.
Moignard designates "victims" as "Plferees" and those using words written by others as "Plferers." At the site, you can view scans requested by site visitors, along with some very sketchy math used to determine potential damages. (Bad news for those of you who block Java by default: nearly the entire site is Java, so you'll be greeted with nothing but a banner. Incredibly annoying, but presumably there to prevent people like me from copying and pasting Moignard's words and thus becoming one of those pesky "Plferers.")
One such example of sketchy math and questionable algorithms involves perfume site Fragrantica and some short-lived Wordpress blog. Somehow, the use of Cartier-related words adds up to more than $600,000 in potential damages. [pdf link to printed report]
The report contains a lot of cool-sounding "weights" and "scores," all of which are presumably part of Plfer's proprietary algorithm.
Shallow scan: (stage one)The Plfer score is explained on the "Getting Started" page:
Found with string: "Cartier gained notoriety in 1904 when Louis Cartier created the first wristwatch" on search page: 0
amongst total results of: 16 (weighted value: 1.6)
with snippet: "Cartier gained notoriety in 1904 when Louis Cartier created the first wristwatch for aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont. This famous timepiece was known as the ..."
Recorded on Plfer search page:fragrantica.com (in full:fragrantica.com/designers/Cartier.html)
This string was number: 16 on the page.
It has an improbability weighting of: 520.
The infringement has a duration of: 708 days.
The Plfer score is:-1741.
The complexity of the string of text, the time between the earliest and later dates and the total number of copies in existence can be used to create a score (plfer score)(10).The last sentence makes no sense, but there it is. "Actionable infringement" doesn't need a score. Either it's infringement or it isn't, and much of what gets highlighted by Plfer's "Deep Scan" seems to be nothing but language that would be common to two sites covering the same subject matter. Here's a screenshot from one Plfer report on two SEO/web design companies' websites.
The lower the number (or the larger the negative number) the more serious the breach.
After a deep scan, the plfer score is updated with many more known factors. A shallow scan plfer score should not be solely relied upon to issue infringement notices.
Using both of these, Plfer arrives at this conclusion:
The plferer earned 1164 points which is greater than the score required to amount to an 'actionable infringement' .
"Substantially similar" phrases include "understanding... signals algorithmically" and "reach your audience." For the two sites noted above, the "substantially similar" wording contains phrases that would be common across all Cartier biographical information. ("Cartier gained notoriety in 1904 when Louis Cartier created the first wristwatch…")
Finding matching phrases and keywords across two marketing sites and claiming it's copyright infringement is a bit like looking over the resume of someone applying for the same position as you and claiming the similar buzzwords and job descriptions are due to your competitor reading over your shoulder.
Now, we get to the really fun stuff: potential damages. These numbers are key to Plfer's success. Plfer charges very minimal fees. "Deep Scans" and "Shallow Scans" run $1/per plus $0.85 in fees. There will presumably be small fees for demand letters and other forms, but the site is still in beta and no pricing is available. Plfer, notably, does not want a cut of recovered damages, which doesn't make it so much a copyright troll as a copyright troll facilitator. From Moignard's advertorial PDF "2015 - the end of copyright?"
Plfer differs from other online copyright service providers in that it takes no pecuniary interest in any of the copyright infringements it uncovers. It does not become a party to any of the cases it reveals but merely assists to provide evidence, pro-forma documents and "wizards" for users and their advisors.Plfer may not partake of any damages recovered, but it still needs to sell its services. And when a scan returns an amount in the low hundreds, it still looks like a bargain because the infringed party only spent a few bucks in return for this "evidence" of "actionable infringement." (The PDF quoted above also hints at Plfer entering into mutually-beneficial contracts with IP-oriented law firms, but there appears to be nothing in place at the moment.)
In the case of Fragrantica, the potential damages are huge. Here's the "math" behind the massive number.
The total value of fragrantica is $ 2,389,600 according to Alexa.com and WorthOfWeb.com. We have calculated the plferee's actual losses as follows:That's some, um, interesting math, especially when the "plifering" site ranks 14 million places lower than the "victim" and would probably never surface in a search for Cartier products -- which would seem to make it more difficult to claim damages. Sure, Fragrantica could pursue this payout and present Plfer's proprietary Alexa math to a judge, but the numbers cited here as mathematically sound are actually beyond the point of speculative.
Our daily advertising income is valued at a minimum of $3314. The proportion of our site contained in parentalstyle.wordpress.com is 5.51%, giving a proportionate advertising revenue loss of $182.60 per day.
The value of this loss over 708 days is therefore $129280.8 USD. Applying a penalty multiplier of 5 times gives a total fair and just actual damages amount of $646,404.00 USD. A standard fee for enforcing an infringement of this nature and degree is $1,998.00 USD.
The total amount payable is therefore $1,998.00 + $646,404.00 = $648,402.00 USD.
Plferer Alexa ranking: 15,105,799
Plferer value: 64
Plferee Alexa ranking: 8,185
Plferee value: 2389600
Duration (years): + 1.94
Penalty: + 646404.00
Fee: + 1998.00
Total: + 648,402.00
Going beyond the sketchy math, there's the reality of the situation. Has anyone ever made money going after "scrapers," who "republish" posts of others in their entirety and whose sites contain 100% infringing material? Of course not. Smaller infringements like these -- which are closer to plagiarism than copyright infringement -- won't be moneymakers either. Plfer might have limited success selling $1 scans to the curious and litigiously stupid, but it's not going to change the face of copyright enforcement, much less supplant Moignard's vineyard as his primary moneymaker.
So, why is Moignard doing this? Well, according to his own statements, it appears to be some sort of crusade against the internet's "devaluing" of copyright-protected content. In the FAQ, under the heading "Is copyright evil?," Moignard first points out that copyright isn't a moral right...
[C]opyright, like all intellectual property rights, is an incentive device, designed to elicit more of certain kinds of 'learning' or knowledge creation and certain kinds of knowledge processing by government, rather than being any fundamental sort of moral right...... before going on to make this a moral issue by quoting two supposed copyright opponents (at least one of which will be very familiar to Techdirt readers)...
For instance, Mike Masnick at TechDirt says:
"People copy stuff all the time, because it's a natural and normal thing to do. People make copies because it's convenient and it serves a purpose -- and quite often they know that doing so causes no harm in those situations."... and summing it up by claiming the high ground.
There are a raft of similar postings by annonymous file-sharing fans such as Enigmax [TorrentFreak], who argues that all information should be free and authors should not receive anything.
Plfer stands in total opposition to the Enigmaxs and Mike Masnick's of this world, and can prove that the technology that makes copying easy also makes prosecuting infringers just as easy.He also presents the copyright industry's attitude towards technological advancement in a far better light than it deserves, while simultaneously portraying innovation as an "attack" on rightholders. (From the "End of copyright" PDF.)
Digital 'internet' transmissions have obviously increased the risk that copyrighted works will be 'reproduced' and 'distributed' in violation of the exclusive rights granted to copyright owners. Copyright law, however, has withstood attacks from other developing media.Yeah, if by "coped" you mean "pushed for favorable legislation" and "sued endlessly." That's not coping. That's finally relenting to the inevitable because you've exhausted all your options.
Specifically, copyright has coped with the invention of broadcast media, copy machines, and the video cassette recorder, and technology is assisting copyright law to step up again today.
Plfer is positioning itself as a "volume" business, making money from quantity rather than quality.
Its developers’ are assuming that the sheer volume of infringements will enable it to generate significant income despite offering these services at a fraction of the cost of equivalent legal advice.This puts it in the same group as copyright trolls like Malibu Media and Prenda Law, even if it doesn't directly benefit from settlements and awarded damages. What it hopes to do is become the starting point for aspiring copyright trolls, using questionable algorithms and damage assessments. It even wants to further limit fair use protections -- again, by using some questionable rationalizations.
With the increasingly commercial nature of all aspects of the public internet and the "monetisation" of site traffic via ubiquitous advertising services such as Google™ AdSense™ and other variants, it is difficult to argue any part of the internet is truly "non-commercial" and so the application of the "fair use" defence would seem to remain limited.Fair use isn't limited to non-commercial enterprises. This misconception refuses to die, and self-proclaimed copyright enforcers like Plfer are doing their best -- either out of spite or ignorance -- to keep it alive. You can make money and still avail yourself of the fair use defense.
Plfer is a mess. Moignard may be ambitious, but his "solution" to small-time infringement will either become another also-ran or the tool of copyright trolls. There's nothing here that doesn't point to either of these two outcomes. ]]>
- Comcast wrote the letter.
- Joseph Morelle (or some poor intern he has) is a really bad plagiarist, who happens to only use Comcast's own material as source material.
- It's all a big coincidence. Only so many words out there, right?
N.Y. State Assembly Leader Joe Morelle: “The combination of Comcast and Time Warner Cable will create a world-class communications, media and technology company to help meet the increasing consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces and on-the-go.”Yeah, I'm sure it's all just a completely random coincidence... ]]>
David Cohen, executive vice-president, Comcast: “The combination of Comcast and TWC will create a world-class communications, media, and technology company to help meet the insatiable consumer demand for advanced digital services on multiple devices in homes, workplaces, and on-the-go.”Joe Morelle: “Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video and digital voice services.”
David Cohen: “Comcast has a proven record of investing in new technologies, facilities, and customer support to provide the best in broadband Internet access, video, and digital voice services.”Joe Morelle: “Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.”
David Cohen: “Similarly, TWC has made significant strides in offering a diverse array of video, broadband, and voice services to its customers.”Joe Morelle: “Combining the two companies’ complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video and voice services across the new company’s footprint.”
David Cohen: “Combining the two companies’ complementary strengths will accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband Internet, video, and voice services across the new company’s footprint.”Joe Morelle: “Residential customers will benefit from technological innovations including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi, while also generating significant cost savings and other efficiencies.”
Comcast Press Release: “Through this merger, more American consumers will benefit from technological innovations, including a superior video experience, higher broadband speeds, and the fastest in-home Wi-Fi. The transaction also will generate significant cost savings and other efficiencies.”Joe Morelle: “In just two-and-a-half years, over 350,000 families, representing approximately 1.4 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the Internet thanks to this program. This proposed merger would extend this vital program to many more low-income households in New York by providing access to it in certain areas of the state currently only served by Time Warner.
David Cohen: “In just two and a half years, over 300,000 families, representing some 1.2 million low-income consumers, have been connected to the transformative power of the Internet thanks to this program. The transaction will extend this vital program to millions more Americans in the areas currently served by TWC.”
And, because some people just don't understand that influence and/or homage is not the same copying, fans of the horror author Thomas Ligotti are accusing the show's creator of plagiarism.
Mike Davis, the editor of The Lovecraft eZine, collaborated with Thomas Ligotti Online founder Jon Padgett to track down similarities between Rust Cohle's dialogue in True Detective and a Thomas Ligotti book called The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. The duo found nearly a dozen instances in which Cohle's dialogue seemed to be cribbed from Ligotti; you can compare them for yourself at The Lovecraft eZine.The Lovecraft post solemnly outlines the definition of plagiarism -- submitting as one's own work, irrespective of intent to deceive, that which derives in part or in its entirety from the work of others without due acknowledgement -- and then goes on to say there are 12 different instances in True Detective where that definition is met. They are convinced the case is closed. Others, such as Slate's David Haglund, are quite far from convinced.
Consider perhaps their strongest example, these lines from Rust Cohle, the character played by Matthew McConaughey: “I think about the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of nonexistence into this meat … Force a life into this thresher.” At different points in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, Thomas Ligotti refers to people being “stolen from nonexistence,” says “we are meat,” and asks, “Why should generations unborn be spared entry into the human thresher?” It’s clear from these similarities that Pizzolatto has read the Ligotti book and borrowed from it—something he has himself acknowledged, about which more below. If True Detective was not a cop show on HBO but a term paper in a philosophy class, then it would indeed be wrong for him to lift such ideas and metaphors from an author without citing him in the work itself. But Davis, at least, does not seem to fully grasp that distinction: He explains his charges by quoting a Cambridge University statement on plagiarism that was explicitly provided for people giving and taking written examinations.This is more commonly known as inspiration or homage. It's not the kind of plagiarism typically highlighted. That's because Cohle is a fictional character, created by Pizzolato and encompassing some aspects of Ligotti's work as a small part of the character's attributes. That's no more plagiarism than using a more general archetype for a character. There is such a thing as plagiarism in fiction, but it typically involves significant amounts of a work being transposed into another. That isn't what we're talking about here.
Add to that the fact that, as briefly mentioned above, Pizzolato does indeed acknowledge Ligotti's influence, and it's difficult to understand what the hell anybody is upset about. Particularly since the accusatory post itself points this out.
Padgett also provides a timeline of people noticing those similarities and Pizzolatto acknowledging them. True Detective premiered on Jan. 12, and nine days later an interviewer mentioned “Cohle’s Ligottian worldview” in a question. In his reply, Pizzolatto didn’t refer to Ligotti by name. Nine days after that, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, Michael Calia, wrote admiringly of the parallels between Ligotti’s work and Pizzolatto’s, citing some of the same passages that Padgett has reproduced this week. (Padgett says he helped with research for Calia’s piece.) A few days later, Calia published an interview with Pizzolatto, in which the showrunner listed Ligotti first among the writers of weird fiction he’d point people to and said that the premiere episode of True Detective featured “two lines in particular (and it would have been nothing to re-word them) that were specifically phrased in such a way as to signal Ligotti admirers.”That kind of verbal bibliography pretty much does the plagiarism charge in completely. So, for all of you Ligotti admirers out there, untwist those boxershorts and enjoy the homage to your hero, because plagiarism this is not. ]]>
Joining their unfortunate ranks is Craig Shirely, an author who has produced books in the past on Ronald Reagan and is presently threatening to sue Rick Perlstein for copyright infringement in his new Reagan book, The Invisible Bridge. Shirley's demands are, um, heavy.
Shirley's attorney is demanding that the publisher pulp Perlstein's book, pay $25 million in damages, and take out ads apologizing to Shirley in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic, Slate, and Salon.A book burning, twenty-five mil-do, and paid apologetic ads in seven different publications? Well, okay then. You're probably thinking that Shirley has some kind of open and shut case with those kinds of demands. He doesn't. What he does have is the ability to point out where Perlstein relayed the same facts Shirley had previously recounted and a few minor sections which use Shirley's previous work as source material and paraphrase it. There are a couple of rather specific words retained in the paraphrasing, but that's about it, and most of those sections are recounting a setting or happening in history.
In the first item on the latter list, the two books do sound alike: Describing the red-light district in Kansas City, Perlstein echoes not just the info in Shirley's text but Shirley's words "festooned" and "smut peddlers." After that, though, we essentially get a list of places where the two writers cited the same facts. Facts are not copyrightable, and one pair of similar sentences does not an infringement make. I don't see a dollar's worth of damages here, let alone 25 million.And it's not as though Perlstein is attempting to hide his use of Shirley's books as source material. The book-in-print directs those interested in the source material to Perlstein's website where he lists them out, including several of Shirley's books. He further credits Shirley's work in his source notes, talking about how useful it was. He further had reached out to Shirley to discuss some of his sources earlier.
Shirley and his lawyers try to twist nearly all of this. They also show a fairly weak understanding of copyright law, often confusing plagiarism and copyright infringement. The two may be related, but are not the same thing. Again, copyright covers the specific expression, but not the idea or the facts. And yet, Shirley's lawyers argue that Perlstein's use of the same facts where he expresses them differently is merely evidence of Perlstein trying to "hide" his actions. Yes, that's right. The act of rewriting the same factual information is being used as evidence of infringement because it's different. But that's not how copyright law works.
Perlstein's publisher, Simon and Schuster hit back strongly, explaining the basics of copyright to Shirley's lawyers:
Your claim ignores the most basic principal of copyright law: copyright only protects an author's original expression. It is therefore important in any copyright analysis to distinguish between original expression and the unprotected elements of a work. Certain well-settled principles govern that analysis and nothing you have drawn to our attention supports a I conclusion that Mr. Perlstein has appropriated Mr. Shirley's protected expression.There's a lot more in those letters which you can read below. This includes an attempt by Shirley to twist an email from Perlstein into saying something it did not. Apparently in angrily discussing the citations (which Perlstein put online, rather than directly in the book), Perlstein trotted out the (overly abused) line "information wants to be free." Shirley's lawyers attempt to portray that as evidence of copyright infringement by Perlstein. However, as Perlstein's lawyers point out, this is not even remotely accurate. The point Perlstein was making was about "open sourcing" his sources by putting them online, making them much easier to use for research purposes, rather than having them locked up in a book. These are the very same sources in which Perlstein regularly cites Shirley.
First, copyright does not protect facts, ideas or theories.... This is true even if the author is the first to have discovered the facts or formulated the ideas. Contrary to your assertion in your letter, copyright does not protect "facts and ideas Mr. Shirley first discovered an developed."....
[....]
All of the examples you cite consist of historical facts from the life of Ronald Reagan, which are unprotected by copyright. Thus, for example, you cite to page 770 of Invisible Bridge, but the historical fact that the manager threatened to cancel the delegation's reservation derives from Time magazine, where Mr. Shirley obtained this information. Mr. Perlstein read the same Time article, but nonetheless chose to credit your client's secondary use of the work. Similarly, Mr. Shirley cannot possibly own a copyright in the fact that the major presidential candidates released their medical records and the information those records contained or that CBS News reported on the number of delegates Ford had accrued. These historical facts were widely reported in contemporaneous news reports. To the extent there can be said to be any similarity of phrasing in the way the two books convey these facts, the similarities consist of commonly-used expressions that cannot be the basis for a claim.
Mr. Perlstein's use of electronic source notes, with links to the actual source materials, is an innovative and dramatic means of full disclosure. As the "Note on Sources" explains, Mr. Perlstein made the sources available electronically, rather than in hard copy form, to make it easier for readers to access the sources directly and engage with them. In the Internet age, readers are far more likely to actually view the source material when it is presented this way then they ever would be to seek it out in paper form at a library. Indeed, Mr. Perlstein's comments about "open sourcing" in his correspondence with your client cannot be twisted as your letter suggests; but instead serve to underscore his ultimate purpose to provide ready access to and openness concerning his sources. To that end, when your client contacted him with a question about how his book was sourced, Mr. Perlstein provided him with a link to his source notes and his Note on Sources, all before publication.Completely destroying the entire book, handing over $25 million and issuing a public apology for no actual infringement? That's not going to happen. And, perhaps Shirley's lawyers are recognizing this. While the letters promise a pre-publication lawsuit would be filed on July 30th, the book was published on August 5th and as far as we can tell, no actual lawsuit has yet been filed. ]]>
It should also be noted that Mr. Perlstein's electronic notes serve another purpose that ultimately may well help your client's presumed goal to sell books. As can be seen on Mr. Perlstein's site, a reader who clicks on one of the citations to Reagan's Revolution is automatically linked to a Google Books page where he or she can not only read the cited page from Mr, Shirley's book but is also given the opportunity to purchase the book, This is hardly the design of an author's intent to "steal" another's work.
While plagiarism scandals pop up every so often, there are a variety of standard responses -- usually involving some sort of apology and then someone laying low for a while before reappearing (just ask Joe Biden). LaBeouf initially appeared to be following the same script... tweeting out apologies, before people started realizing that the apologies themselves were "plagiarized." That includes using Tiger Woods' apology after his scandal: "I have let my family down, and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart." Also, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's famous apology concerning his role in the Vietnam War: "I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why."
From there, he finally admitted on New Year's eve that he was really mocking everyone -- which should have been obvious from the beginning, by saying:
You have my apologies for offending you for thinking I was being serious instead of accurately realizing I was mocking you.Oh, and if you hadn't figured it out already, that line is also plagiarized.
He then decided to give an email interview with BleedingCool, much of which itself appears to be plagiarized as well. BleedingCool initially claimed that it believed the statements were "original" to LaBeouf, but then has gone back and noted repeated lines in the interview that are plagiarized from others. I'm guessing that they're missing quite a few others.
But what comes out of it is what is likely a highly plagiarized defense of plagiarism, as well as a condemnation of the state of copyright law today, and how it limits forms of expression. Take this tidbit, for example:
The problem begins with the legal fact that authorship is inextricablyAt least some of that is from Larry Lessig. Almost certain other parts are from others. But, in a way he's proving the point. He is creating something new, unique and interesting, even as he's plagiarizing others, even to the point of talking about outdated copyright laws.
bound up in the idea of ownership and the idea of language as
Intellectual property. Language and ideas flow freely between people
Despite the law. It’s not plagiarism in the digital age – it’s repurposing.
Copyright law has to give up on its obsession with “the copy”
The law should not regulate “copy’s” or “reproductions” on there own.
It should instead regulate uses – like public distributions of copyrighted work -
That connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.
The author was the person who had been authorized by the state to print there work.
They were the ones to be held accountable for the ideas.
THE FIRST LAWS ON AUTHORSHIP WERE USED TO CENSOR & PERSECUTE
THE WRITERS WHO DARED PUBLISH RADICAL IDEAS.
Simple – should creation have to check with a lawyer?
For what it's worth, even this idea is not unique. Back in 2007 we wrote about author Jonathan Lethem writing an entire defense of plagiarism, which was 100% plagiarized. If Labeouf is looking for more material, he might want to check that one out, if he hasn't already. Oh, and also Malcolm Gladwell's 2004 defense of plagiarism, which has some great quotes as well. ]]>
PNAS [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] has a curious correction in a recent issue. A group from Toronto and Mount Sinai in New York, it seems, had been rather too liberal in their use of text from a previously published paper by another researcher -- what we might call plagiarism, in a less charitable mood.That is, the PNAS correction simply put quotation marks around the text that had been, er, borrowed, and then linked the new quotations to the original paper. The problem with this approach is that it fails to acknowledge the plagiarism -- the text simply says that some of the descriptions were "not appropriately noted in our article" -- or the real magnitude of contribution from others, since multiple passages link to a reference at the end of the article. As a result, PNAS ends up looking rather pathetic for attempting to play down what happened in this way. As some in the lively comments section on the Retraction Watch piece note, it would have been far better to retract the entire article, re-write and re-submit it.
To paraphrase Beyoncé: If you like it, better put some quotation marks around it. But we're pretty sure she meant before, not after, the fact.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
]]>First, plagiarism is a violation of academic norms but not illegal; copyright violation second is illegal, but in truth pretty ubiquitous in academia. (Where did you get that PDF?)The post goes on to present some hypothetical cases that illustrate the concrete differences between plagiarism and copyright infringement, again as far as the academic world is concerned. There's also this handy summary of the central issue:
Second, plagiarism is an offence against the author, while copyright violation is an offence against the copyright holder. In traditional academic publishing, they are usually not the same person, due to the ubiquity of copyright transfer agreements (CTAs).
Third, plagiarism applies when ideas are copied, whereas copyright violation occurs only when a specific fixed expression (e.g. sequence of words) is copied.
Fourth, avoiding plagiarism is about properly apportioning intellectual credit, whereas copyright is about maintaining revenue streams.
Plagiarism is about the failure to properly attribute the authorship of copied material (whether copies of ideas or of text or images). Copyright violation is about failure to pay for the use of the material.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+ ]]>
Contents copyright Colin Purrington (1997-2013). Plagiarizing, adapting, and hosting elsewhere prohibited. Included in the plagiarizing prohibition is paraphrase plagiarism, which is when you copy sentences and phrases but make minor word changes to mask your theft. Also, I have lost my patience with people claiming that Fair Use allows them to bypass my copyright. Really, folks?Well, yes, actually. That's the whole point of fair use. If it's fair use, it does let you bypass copyright. His copyright claim is a pretty clear example of copyfraud, overclaiming certain rights. Also, while I agree that he certainly may hold the copyright on the work, significant parts of the work are basically just factual statements, which generally aren't subject to copyright protection, or, at the very least, very weak copyright protection.
That said, none of that means he deserves what then happened. He apparently sent one of his "hey stop it!" letters to Purdue University's DMCA takedown address and cc'ing a general catchall email at the The Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research (CPBR) after finding parts of his guide in a document hosted on the Purdue site, which was discussing an upcoming CPBR competition. While I think that Purrington goes way, way, way overboard in his claims about his own copyright, it does seem fairly clear that CPBR copied significant portions of Purrington's own work. The original file is no longer on the Purdue website, though you can see it here (or embedded below). As the folks at Retraction Watch have pointed out, it's pretty clear that the CPBR version copies heavily from Purrington's document.
For what it's worth, while Purrington sent a notice to Purdue's DMCA address, his letter is clearly not a DMCA-compliant / takedown letter, and really does seem to be more of a "hey, you should take this down" admonition, including an exceptionally jokey closing line:
If you can cover the shipping charges, I would be grateful if you to send me the head of the person who did this.Har har. Still, what came back was quite unexpected. A threat letter from CPBR's very expensive lawyers at big shot law firm, Arnold & Porter. These guys cost a lot. In that letter, they claim that CPBR didn't copy Purrington, but rather that Purrington copied CPBR and that now that they were aware that Purrington had violated the copyright on CPBR, they were threatening him with statutory damages, up to $150,000 for willful infringement, for copyright infringement if he didn't take down his work.
Oh yeah, and they claim that jokey last line is being viewed "as a physical threat against [CPBR staff's] personal safety" and warn that if any further threats are made, they will go to the authorities.
While Purrington's guide has moved around online a few times (and ridiculously, no one covering this seems to link back to the original), you can find the earlier version that supports his story if you look in the Internet Archive for the guide's old address at Swarthmore. CPBR's letter clearly claims that CPBR created the content in 2005. Purrington's guide dates back to 2001, though it is a bit different. Still, you can find both of the key passages highlighted by RetractionWatch in a late 2004 version of Purrington's document (though, oddly, one of the copied phrases only shows up right at the very end of 2004, but that's still before 2005).
CPBR is a big organization. It takes in tens of millions of dollars in government grants and then fees it out to universities to do research. You'd think that it would know better than to claim copyright over something when there's pretty clear evidence that it was the one doing the copying.
While I find Purrington's position on copyright a bit ridiculous (also: his continual confusion between plagiarism and copyright, his refusal to acknowledge fair use within the law, and inability to compose a complaint DMCA takedown notice), it does seem pretty clear here that the party over reacting (massively) is CPBR. When the Chronicle of Higher Education reached out to both CPBR's director and the lawyer who wrote the letter, it appears that both hung up on the reporter. It might be time to admit that they royally screwed up here. ]]>
The threshold of consciousness is the dividing line between something that can be processed by the conscious mind and something that enters the subconscious mind without any such processing. A hidden message is not intense enough to produce a sensation but has sufficient intensity to influence the behavior and mental processes of one's mind. The decisions the conscious mind makes are based upon the knowledge and reasoning skills one has developed through experience and education....What that had to do with the lawsuit was anyone's guess, but it was copied from an online student essay.
Earlier this week, the judge (not surprisingly at all) dismissed the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds:
The Supreme Court has made clear that "[m]usic, as a form of expression and communication, is protected under the First Amendment." Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 790 (1989). Thus, because the Song is a protected work of art, the use of plaintiff’s name therein does not violate the New York Civil Rights Law.Furthermore, the court went on to note that even if the lawsuit wouldn't have been thrown out on purely First Amendment grounds, the case had no chance, because Pitbull's use of Lohan's name wasn't for advertising purposes, or to imply she somehow endorsed the song. Lohan's lawyer tried to argue that because Pitbull made money from the song, and Lohan's name was in it, the use was "purposes of trade," which is (yet again) a rather unique interpretation of what the law is clearly about, so the court pointed out that this, too, was hogwash.
The fact that the Song was presumably created and distributed for the purpose of making a profit does not mean that plaintiff’s name was used for “advertising” or “purposes of trade” within the meaning of the New York Civil Rights Law.Going one step further, the court noted that even if the First Amendment didn't suffice, and even if they found that the user of Lohan's name was for the purposes of advertising or trade, the case still would have failed:
Even if the Court were to conclude that plaintiff had sufficiently alleged that her name was used in the Song for purposes of advertising or trade, the isolated nature of the use of her name would, in and of itself, prove fatal to her New York Civil Rights Law claim. “Courts in New York are reluctant to impose liability under §§ 50-51 for incidental use of a person’s name or image because of the danger of imposing an uncalled-for burden and hazard on publishers.”The court also dismissed Lohan's other ridiculous claims, including "unjust enrichment" and "intentional infliction of emotional distress," basically stating that neither claim appears to make any sense at all.
Pitbull's lawyers had hit back and asked for sanctions against Ovadia for her rambling cut-and-paste legal filing, and they got those too. Ovadia tried to defend herself first by throwing another lawyer in her office under the bus and saying it was all his fault, but then also that the filing was an early draft that had been filed incorrectly. The only problem? The "final" draft that she offered up as a replacement still contained much of the plagiarized text. So she was sanctioned $750 for lying to the court:
The Redline demonstrates that, contrary to Attorney Ovadia’s assertions in the Letter, not one of the changes in the proposed amended opposition would have corrected or cured the plagiarized portions of the Opposition. Instead, most of the changes to the plagiarized portions of the proposed amended opposition were merely corrections and insertions of citations to case law.... Attorney Ovadia, who is represented by her own counsel in connection with the sanctions motion, does not respond to the allegation that her representation in the Letter – i.e., that the proposed amended opposition would have “obviated any alleged plagiarism concerns” – was, in fact, untrue. Based on the fact that Attorney Ovadia made this undisputedly false representation to the Court, and pursuant to the Court’s inherent powers, Attorney Ovadia is hereby fined in the amount of $750.00. This amount shall be paid by Attorney Ovadia and shall be made payable to the Clerk of the Court on or before March 22, 2013.And then there was another $750 sanction for the plagiarism itself. The court practically laughs off Ovadia's attempt to throw her colleague under the bus as well. Ovadia tried to claim that sanctions weren't appropriate because "additional fact-finding would be necessary" to determine who really wrote the filing. The court points out, in response, that Ovadia was the one who signed the filing, so the responsibility is all on her:
With respect to defendants’ allegations that the majority of the Opposition was plagiarized, plaintiff and her counsel do not deny these assertions. Indeed, defendants’ submissions to the Court evidence that almost the entire text of the Opposition is taken from unidentified, unattributed sources. (See Jimenez Decl., Ex. A.) Obviously, this type of conduct is unacceptable and, in the Court’s view, is sanctionable pursuant to its inherent powers. Attorney Ovadia takes the position that the Court should refrain from imposing sanctions because “additional fact-finding will be necessary” to determine which of plaintiff’s two attorneys is responsible for the plagiarism and/or the degree to which any such responsibility should be apportioned between them. (See Ovadia’s Sanctions Opp’n at 9.) The Court recognizes that Attorneys Ovadia and Ahuja dispute which of them drafted the final version of the Opposition that was ultimately filed. It is clear, however, that only Attorney Ovadia signed the Opposition. In the Court’s view, this leaves Attorney Ovadia solely liable for the sanctionable plagiarism. Cf. Kiobel v. Millson, 592 F.3d 78, 87 (2d Cir. 2010) (“‘The person signing, filing, submitting, or advocating a document has a nondelegable responsibility to the court, and in most [situations] should be sanctioned for a violation.’”) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 11 advisory committee note). Accordingly, pursuant to the Court’s inherent power, Attorney Ovadia is hereby fined an additional $750.00 which shall also be made payable to the Clerk of the Court on or before March 22, 2013.12While the court notes that the $1,500 in sanctions is relatively small, it also notes that it chose this number accounting for the additional "negative impact on Attorney Ovadia’s reputation and livelihood that will inevitably arise from her involvement in this situation."
The one area where Pitbull's lawyers failed was in their attempt to force Lohan to also have to pay their fees. The court noted that despite Lohan's claims failing, they didn't fail at a level that would have made them "frivolous." Also, the court said that the plagiarized filing didn't lead to any real additional work for Pitbull's lawyers. The court also slaps the wrists of Pitbull's lawyers for failing to directly raise the issue of the plagiarized filings with Ovadia, despite corresponding with her after realizing that the filing was plagiarized. ]]>
Plagiarism and copyright infringement are not quite the same thing -- and there have been discussions of whether or not you can really infringe on copying a legal filing (it happens often enough, though usually in snippets, rather than wholesale). Not that anyone took Steele's claims of "protecting" copyright seriously, but it really says something when the law firm billing itself as protecting against piracy chooses to copy top to bottom someone else's legal filing. Check out both filings below. ]]>
Yes, reader redrum writes in about a wonderful story in which Bob Dylan flatly states that those who have accused him of plagiarism are "wussies and pussies."
"Meow I would not feeeeel, so all alooooone!"
Image source: CC BY 2.0
In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine for its Friday edition, the influential singer-songwriter made his first public comments on the accusations, saying that in folk and jazz music "quotation is a rich and enriching tradition."It's a fair point by Dylan, I think. I mean, so what if he appropriated lyrics like "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound" almost verbatim from the biography of a Japanese mobster? That seriously isn't a big deal. And, yes, perhaps it seemed kind of strange when Dylan offered the world a painting exhibit he said was from scenes of his travels, when they were actually scenes from other people's photographs. But big deal. That's often how culture works. No harm, no foul.
"Everyone else can do it but not me," he complained. "There are different rules for me."
The problem, of course, is that there are some people who think this kind of appropriation isn't okay. That it takes away from culture, rather than adding to it. That words have the right to be owned and art should be protected. One such person, who would disagree with Bob Dylan in this case, is Bob Dylan. As we've previously discussed:
He didn't just filch songs from other people's repertoires; he stole their arrangements. (As late as 1992, he lifted Nic Jones's arrangement of Canadee-I-O, wholesale and without acknowledgment.) He did this on both sides of the Atlantic. The great Martin Carthy, who has also just turned 70, taught him Scarborough Fair, which Dylan then recycled as Girl from the North Country.And that's the Bob Dylan we disagree with. Of course appropriating words, or photographs, or whatever as pieces to a larger cultural output is the way folk music works. And art. And writing. And film. We all stand on the shoulders, to some degree, of those that came before us. It's a good thing. As much as Dylan is contradicting himself, he's correct to push back on those accusing him of plagiarism. But he might also have to revisit his own views on the way people use his work as well. ]]>
But he treated his own songs as private property: what's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. The assertion of his individualism involved in "going electric" was in part a way of defining Dylan entirely as an individual artist and therefore as the sole owner of his own songs.
- Jonah Lehrer, who had blogged for Wired for several years and was recently hired (and then fired) by The New Yorker, reportedly fabricated quotes and recycled or outright plagiarized parts of articles. While Wired had initially agreed to keep Lehrer on as a features writer, after carefully examining a number of his posts, the magazine just recently decided to end its relationship with him due to his failure to "meet WIRED editorial standards" or to "follow basic good journalism practices." [url]
- Ryan Holiday, marketing director at American Apparel, calls himself a "media manipulator." He wrote a book called "Trust Me, I'm Lying" on how to exploit the media by lying. Even worse, he used Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and pretended to be an expert on pretty much everything -- by lying, of course -- and managed to fool reporters from MSNBC, ABC News, CBS, The New York Times, and more. He claims it was all part of an experiment. [url]
- Margaret Wente has been accused of plagiarism -- copying the words of another Canadian columnist for her own article in 2009 about genetically modified foods in Africa. She has responded to the allegations, but her employers have also disciplined her (without revealing the details of her punishment and obviously not firing her). [url]
- Poynter.org has a wrap-up of the year's journalistic failings (so far) -- which it calls Journalism's Summer of Sin -- and it prescribes some measures for news organizations to prevent (and deal with) plagiarism and fabrication. The year isn't over, though, so place your bets on how many more journalistic fumbles will occur before 2013. [url]
- South African Olympian Cameron van der Burgh set a world record in the men's 100-meter breaststroke (and won a gold medal), but later he admitted to using more dolphin kicks than are officially allowed. He's not the only one doing it, but that doesn't make it right (just like peeing in the pool). [url]
- In the UK, Charles Ingram cheated "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" with a simple system of having his wife cough at the correct answers. Ingram and his accomplices were found guilty of cheating by a jury, but maybe if they'd used a slightly less obvious audible system... [url]
- The 2012 National Scrabble Championship was marred by a boy caught palming blank tiles. Cheating at Scrabble is considered such a rare event that a fake wunderkind caught red handed made national news. [url]
- Surprise: students enrolled in online classes with Coursera have been found cheating with dozens of cases of alleged plagiarism. Students don't (currently) earn any real credits from these classes, but that will likely change someday. So when more online classes actually have value, there will be far more than a few dozen cheaters. [url]
The list for this kind of nonsense runs long. There was that time when Heart insisted McCain stop introducing Sarah "Barracuda" Palin with their well-known song. Then there was a magical moment where former-Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh sued Republican Congressional candidate Joe Walsh (...seriously) over the use of one of his songs. Tom Petty went after Michelle Bachman. Survivor's Frankie Sullivan went after Newt Gingrich. Even Hollwood Ronald Reagan got into it with The Boss by hillariously using Born In The U.S.A. as some kind of pro-America rallying cry (when the song's message is the exact opposite).
Which brings us to Mitt Romney, who apparently played Sliversun Pickups' song Panic Switch at a campaign rally (again, hilarious) only to find a cease and desist letter in his mailbox.
The rock band Silversun Pickups this week served Romney's campaign with a cease-and-desist order after it says Romney's campaign used its song "Panic Switch" at an event earlier this month.Interestingly, as with many of the aforementioned examples, Romney may well have done nothing of the sort. Most of these campaigns have a blanket license to use such music and, while the cease and desist letter reportedly also included a mention of Trademark law, they're likely covered on both ends. The blanket license takes care of copyright, and the fact that I'm fairly certain Mitt Romney is not about to launch a new career venture which in any way involves him performing as a musician should nix the trademark issue. Even if the band disagrees with Mr. Romney's politics, that isn't cause for them to exclude his campaign from using what is covered by the license for which they paid.
"Seems as if the GOP is once again whimsically ignoring our great nation's laws to do whatever it wants to do, and shooting itself in the foot in the process," band representative Ken Weinstein said in a statement.
For what it's worth, this isn't the first time Romney has had to deal with this kind of thing, either. Both Al Green and K'naan have had recent scuffles over the use of their music. For you young kids out there, Al Green made the music your parents were listening to as you were being conceived. And for you older folks, K'naan, judging solely by his name, is apparently an alien from Rob Reid's Year Zero universe.
In any case, from the band's perspective, given the speciousness of their claims, they probably would have been better served simply voicing not only their disagreement with the Romney campaign's politics, but pointing out the absurdity of using a song with a title that is the very antithesis of a campaign working feverishly to demonstrate that it is in control. What they should not have done is hire an attorney who wrote their cease and desist letter, full of smug educational quips about copyright and trademark law, and that referred to such serious topics as the First Amendment and Fair Use in this manner:
"We anticipate that you, or your general counsel, may respond to this letter with a letter of your own using all those neat lawyerly words like “First Amendment,” “fair use” and “parody.” Please know that none of those buzzwords (or the law they represent) works for you here."As Public Knowledge rightly points out, these are not buzzwords. They are also not "lawyerly" words. The First Amendment is more of a Constitutionly term and Fair Use and Parody are Case-Law-ly terms. Snide degredation does not a good legal notice make.
On the other hand, perhaps the band's legal team can find respite from those snide remarks in the fact that their cease and desist letter may have been plagiarized from the attorney that wrote his letter for Joe Walsh when he was (I still can't belive this) complaining about Joe Walsh. Lest your sweet little minds think that this is too funny to be real, I give you this quote from Silversun Pickup's lawyer, Tamara Milgros-Butler:
"When I needed to write a cease and desist letter, I did what almost any contract lawyer does many times day and I looked at historic forms," she says. "I simply loved the tone of this language (in the Walsh letter). And geez, I looked back when my boss raised the issue and ran a red-line comparison. While the language isn't precisely the same, I borrowed liberally from Peter's letter."
Asked whether she regrets what she did, Milagros-Butler says "I regret not looking back or thinking more. I regret not thinking more backwards to see if it was our letter or someone else's. If I thought about it more, I would have realized that we didn't represent Joe Walsh."God bless America (please don't send a C&D letter, Irving Berlin. I totally loved White Christmas. Also, you're dead, so you probably can't hear me.). ]]>
Over at the Bizzaro Blog, home to Dan Piraro's Bizzaro Comic, Piraro writes about a recent incident he had over one of his recently published comics.
Here's a bit of a sticky wicket I thought you Jazz Pickles might find interesting. After my pantsless doctor cartoon appeared in papers the other day I got an email from my friend and colleague, Dan Reynolds. Dan is a terrifically talented and successful cartoonist whose work I have always admired. It seems my doctor cartoon is uncomfortably close to a very popular one that he did some years ago.In most similar situations we report on here, this is the part where the person complaining usually sends a legal threat of some sort. But that is not what happened. What happened was something refreshing and quite out of the norm, at least in these circles. Both artists realized that people can come up with the same joke independently and then brushed the incident off.
Did I steal this cartoon? Of course not and Dan did not accuse me of it. Cartoonists with a large readership and an I.Q. above 75 (me) are not foolish enough to publish a stolen cartoon, especially from someone with an equally large readership (Dan R.).What amazes me here is that two grown adults actually acted like adults. Why can't we have more of these kinds of interactions? Even when the idea was almost identical, both were able to look past that and see the reality of the situation.
...
Oh well, these things happen. Dan R. was a gentlemen about it and readily accepted our apology. We're all still friends. :o)
In response to the unfortunate incident, Piraro has decided to take a bit more precaution in the future. He has decided to do Google image searches of future ideas, just to make sure that he doesn't step on the toes of anyone else. However, he recognizes that even that plan has a glaring weakness.
Cliff and I work together frequently so we committed to redouble our efforts to Google-Image-search all of our ideas to make sure no one else had gotten there first. The thing is, though, we decided to retro-search this one and could not find it under any of the titles we could think of. “Backwards Doctor Coat Cartoon” was our most obvious choice but Dan’s cartoon didn’t show up in that search. So we still would have been screwed.So even if he does a search, there are no guarantees that someone else's work would come up which matches his idea. Under these circumstances, how much effort should one allow? I would say that even doing the initial search is probably more than enough. It is more than you are actually required to do. Yet, there are some people out there that seem to think that is not enough -- that a person in Piraro's situation should have just known about that other comic. But as Piraro has shown, it is just not possible to cover all your bases.
All in all, this is a great experience for all the things it can teach us. 1) Acting like adults when a situation arises results in mutually beneficial results. 2) Recognizing that no joke is a unique flower incapable of being copied unintentionally is a wise move. 3) That even the best Google-fu cannot prevent you from unintentionally copying someone else's joke. Sounds like some pretty good lessons to me. ]]>
Reader drew writes in about the story of two fiction authors, John Scalzi (whom you may recognize from when we wrote about his free ebook experiment) and CJ Cherryh, who found that there were people selling the authors' works under a different name on Amazon's site. They sent their DMCA notices and waited in frustration as their publishers worked with the site to get all of the infringing works taken down. This admittedly has to be frustrating for victims, but fortunately the authors weren't content to sit on their hands and be pissed off.
"Both writers also posted a request for their Facebook fans to write scathing one-star reviews of Mr. Farabi's books, and warn others about the scan. By noon on Sunday, July 15th, all six of "Mr. Farabi's books" had been pulled, and were no longer for sale on Amazon.com. Score one for irate fans and copyright holders!"The point here is that if you truly connect with your fans, they will be willing to fight on your behalf in situations such as this, and that is a far cry from the theory that everyone on the internet simply wants everything for free. But it takes work and a willingness to connect with your fan-base, so that the fans are willing to support you in this manner. Still, that work pays off in the passion those true fans will demonstrate.
And content creators, be they authors, musicians, or movie-makers, have no greater ally than a passionate fan-base. Those fans, as demonstrated here, are a more effective anti-piracy weapon than any legislation you can dream up, because while some companies on the internet may or may not be interested in acting as the "copyright police," they will sure as hell listen to their customers. ]]>
He compared patent infringement to signing one's name on a painting that someone else put energy into finishing. Cook stressed the importance of companies building their own stuff so that Apple would not be "the developer for the rest of the world."Kinda like, you know, how Apple "signed its name" to the graphical user interface developed at Xerox PARC? Or the mouse developed at SRI? Or multitouch browsing, developed by a bunch of other folks prior to the iPhone? Sure, Apple improved on all of these things, and many other things as well, but Apple is famous for taking the developments done elsewhere and merely putting a nice final consumer-friendly coat of paint on it. No doubt, this is an important step, but it's ridiculous to pretend that Apple has come up with the various ideas it has and no one else could have possibly developed the same things. And, of course, plagiarism (claiming credit for something you didn't do) is an entirely separate issue from infringement (using an invention/creative work without authorization). So it seems silly to even use that analogy.
Of course, then Walt Mossberg brings up the fact that Apple is, in fact, the target of many patent lawsuits as well... and suddenly Cook's tone changes, insisting that those cases are different:
“The vast majority of those are on standards-essential patents,” he said, adding that it's an area where today's patent system is "broken."Now, to some extent he's correct that patent battles over "standards-essential" patents are particularly nefarious, but it still seems like quite the double standard to insist that the patents that Apple has asserted against various makers of Android tablets and smartphones aren't equally silly and destructive to basic market competition. Apple makes great products that people love. If only it would let those products compete fairly in the market, it could save money on the bruising legal fights it's involved in around the globe. Cook admitted that patent battles are "overhead" and he wished the fights weren't so costly. Of course, that would be a lot more convincing if the company hadn't launched so many patent battles itself. ]]>
German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan is facing allegations that she plagiarized parts of her dissertation, published in 1980. A Web site, called schavanplag (in German) has listed 56 incidents in which the anonymous accuser says Schavan copied phrasing from improperly cited sources.That on its own might not be so remarkable, were it not for the fact that there have been at least two other recent cases of plagiarism by German politicians -- Silvana Koch-Mehrin in June last year, and Jorgo Chatzimarkakis a month later.
Now, I don't know what exactly the positions of all those German politicians were on unauthorised sharing of files online, but I somehow doubt that any of them approved of it. And yet they seem not to have had any qualms about copying other people's work and passing it off as their own.
Beyond the double standards involved, there's another important point to be made here, I think. Plagiarism is about denying creators attribution that is rightly theirs. When people share files online, by contrast, there is no attempt to pass them off as their own work -- the attribution is always preserved, because otherwise people wouldn't know what they were downloading.
That's probably why online sharing can sometimes increase the sales of the works involved: it's a way of signalling that you enjoy something -- and a personal recommendation is perhaps the most powerful form of marketing around. Plagiarism, on the other hand, is a conscious attempt to boost your own reputation by depriving others of the recognition they are due, with all that this implies for lost rewards.
So which is worse? And which one should German politicians be most concerned about?
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]]>My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for that. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent a half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years' extension, because that benefits my two daughter, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.He later argues for infinite copyright:
The English idea of copyright, as I found, was different, when I was before the committee of the House of Lords, composed of seven members I should say. The spokesman was a very able man, Lord Thring, a man of great reputation, but he didn't know anything about copyright and publishing. Naturally be didn't, because he hadn't been brought up to this trade. It is only people who have had intimate personal experience with the triumphs and griefs of an occupation who know how to treat it and get what is justly due.Some have argued, somewhat convincingly, that Twain as actually doing a somewhat brilliant satire, which not everyone understood. That would be awesome, if true, and there are some hints that it may very well be. However, it does appear that Twain himself was somewhat more conflicted on this particular issue. Siva Vaidhyanathan has an entire chapter (pdf) of his excellent book, Copyrights and Copyrwrongs, devoted to Twain's fluctuating views on copyright. However, he does suggest that later on in life -- from 1898 onward basically -- Twain appeared to be a strong maximalist.
Now that gentleman had no purpose or desire in the world to rob anybody or anything, but this was the proposition--fifty years extension--and he asked me what I thought the limit of copyright ought to be.
"Well," I said, "perpetuity." I thought it ought to last forever.
So it's interesting to then discover, via Joe Betsill, that during that same period, Twain argued that "the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism" and that this wasn't a bad thing. The specifics are that Twain was writing a letter to Helen Keller, who a decade earlier (at 12-years of age) had just gone through a controversy in which she was accused of plagiarizing heavily from another book for her own work, The Frost King. Twain wrote to Keller, with whom he was friendly, after learning about the plagiarism accusations:
Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that "plagiarism" farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men—but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some degree, and we call it his; but there are others that contributed. It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.That was sent in 1903. Yet just three years later, he was arguing to Congress that ideas were property and should remain in the possession of those that created them forever:
Then why don't we unwittingly reproduce the phrasing of a story, as well as the story itself? It can hardly happen—to the extent of fifty words except in the case of a child; its memory-tablet is not lumbered with impressions, and the actual language can have graving-room there, and preserve the language a year or two, but a grown person's memory-tablet is a palimpsest, with hardly a bare space upon which to engrave a phrase. It must be a very rare thing that a whole page gets so sharply printed on a man's mind, by a single reading, that it will stay long enough to turn up some time or other to be mistaken by him for his own. No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our own, but that is about the most we can do. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes's poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my "Innocents Abroad" with. Then years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass—no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your "Plagiarism Court;" and so when I said, "I know now where I stole it, but whom did you steal it from," he said, "I don't remember; I only know I stole it from somebody, because I have never originated anything altogether myself, nor met anyone who had."
To think of those solemn donkeys breaking a little child's heart with their ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! Oh, dam—
So if I could have convinced that gentleman that a book which does consist solely of ideas, from the base to the summit, then that would have been the best argument in the world that it is property, like any other property, and should not be put under the ban of any restriction, but that it should be the property of that man and his heirs forever and ever, just as a butcher shop would be, or--I don't care--anything, I don't care what it is. It all has the same basis. The law should recognize the right of perpetuity in this and every other kind of property.Now, plagiarism and copyright are not exact equivalents -- though there can (and often is) significant overlap. But it's difficult to see how the same person can reasonably argue both points. Perhaps that lends some credence to the claims that the Congressional hearing was, in fact, satire. Either way, I think I like the 1903 Mark Twain waxing poetically on how all ideas are plagiarism much more than the 1906 Mark Twain whining about how his children are too useless to do anything and need to keep making money from his books long after he's dead. ]]>