Plagiarism?

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    • by Frank Paynter on July 22, 2024

    Is this plagiarism, theft, or irresponsible doinkage?   It does look a lot like this.

    Hat tip to Seth for pointing it out to me.

    { 14 comments… read them below or add one }

    Niek Hockx 07.23.05 at 4:06

    Nothing surprises me anymore… The other day I found my own RSS feed content along with Dave Winer’s and several other blogger’s feeds all cleverly mixed together on some obscure Viagra promoting, “sex therapy” web site. Go figure! Nope, I don’t remember the URL, because I decided to ignore it.

    Stu Savory 07.23.05 at 8:55

    Well, at least they have taken that posting off their site now, so presumably they had a bad conscience :-)

    fp 07.23.05 at 9:04

    Niek… I want to say something funny about Viagra and the erotic quality of your photography, but rather than stretch for that, I think I’ll just go to your site and view the beautiful pictures.

    Stu… the posting isn’t up front on that site, but it’s still linkable, so I wonder just what the heck they are doing with my work. (Funny how a link back would have made me happy but enormous unattributed cut and pastage makes me surly. I’m off for a cuppa coffee now. That’ll drive out the surliness).

    Niek Hockx 07.23.05 at 3:57

    Heh he… yes, Frank I can see why you were tempted to make a funny remark - and that’s of course fine with me - but the thing is: I never include pictures in my RSS feed. In fact I don’t even have full posts in my feed (Yes, that’s a deliberate choice I made). And like I said: it was not only my text feed they grabbed and used, also several others. And it was all content, which basically had nothing to do with the “theme” of the site.

    Anyway,…Thanks for visiting my site and your compliment on my pictures!

    Winston 07.24.05 at 5:35

    So I guess this is the price we pay for dabbling in this medium. We need to be vigilant and protect each others’ backsides. Seems there’s no sure way to protect rights to anything we create, other than hide it in the cellar and hope nobody sees it. On a small scale, this is what the record and video publishing folks are fighting. So whatcha gonna do, sue them?

    Harry 07.24.05 at 7:22

    I’m going to send them a trackback and see if they have any shame.

    Scratchings 07.24.05 at 7:33

    How NOT To Introduce Your Service

    Frank asks, “is this plagiarism?” in reference to a post that was cut and pasted without attribut…

    fp 07.24.05 at 9:08

    I’m just going to moan about it… it’s happened before and it will happen again, but it’s so annoying!

    Harry 07.24.05 at 10:23

    And well you should! Moan, that is. You put in a lot of effort and used your good name to collect responses for an interesting document. People are using things just like it as sources for academic studies; contributing to our understanding. Then some huckster comes along and grabs it. I will moan in solidarity.

    Jon Husband 07.25.05 at 11:39

    And Wired magazine of course adds to the fray, with a recent cover proclaiming *The Cut-and-Paste Culture*.

    Between a rock and a hard place, eh ? The other alternative at the moment is to help MS, HP and the like own us all by buying into draconian DRM.

    fp 07.25.05 at 11:59

    I think a middle ground of copyright assertion is what I’m after, Jon. Right now, I don’t have any notice of copyright, creative commons, or whatever on my online material. So, it’s probably time for me to be grown up about that just so thieves will understand the boundaries they have crossed.

    As for DRM… I have a toolkit containing garlic, a cross, a silver bullet and a wooden stake for use should that creature show it’s ugly face.

    Jon Husband 07.25.05 at 2:30

    Thanks for the elaboration, frank. I have some faith (as much as one can have when surrounded by the well-paid lawyers beavering away towards establishing corporate control of everything forever) that CC is indeed a precursor to some form of effective middle ground re: copyright.

    At the very least you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that you did stick up some signs, even if you didn’t erect electrified wire fences.

    The Continental Op 07.25.05 at 8:42

    Frank, you’re being way too easy on them. Whether or not you have a cwopyright or CC notice, any sentient being ought to know it’s wrong to copy your stuff without attribution. These people are bottom-feeders and deserve no understanding.

    fp 07.25.05 at 10:35

    Well, I agree with you, Op… hey can I call you Eric or something? “The” is such an awkward first name.

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