Slashdot Mirror
MIT Steals Comic Book Character
Merle writes "According to Horizon Comics MIT has stolen images from their comic Radix in a proposal to the US Army as an attempt to gain funds to foot a project in creating a better, stronger type of soldier for tomorrow. Upon inspection of the images themselves, it can be easily seen that minor image alteration and a bit of photoshop magic for the background, MIT did a classic comic book "swipe" and took the credit for it." Well, imitation/flattery/blah blah blah, but man. Thats just strange.
I was told in primary school that an undocumented idea taken from someone else or a previously published document is plagiarism if and only if no less than five words are used consecutively. For example, if you were to quote this comment in your own work and take credit for it, you could legally say previously published document is, but you would have to use quotes and references, i.e. "previously published document is plagiarism" (G0SP0DAR, slashdot.org, 20020901) for you to use my reference without plagiarising (okay, this is just an example, please don't Google me to it!).
At any rate, words can be counted with discrete numbers. How does one evaluate how much of an image is original and how much, and to what extent, is an actual image 'plagiarized'? I would say that before the age of computers, the discernment of such things would be a lost cause. But there are ways to compare layers of images, in terms of pixels, lines, colors, etc. to determine how things match up, sort of like the way biometric security programs measure fingerprints, retinal scans, and the like, to compare how good a match something is. In short, there would have to be a standard by which something could not be 'too good' a match for it to be original. What that standard would be, in terms of percent correspondence in different aspects, would have to be determined by "experts in the field." After that, leave me out of it!
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
Score:-1, Funny
Professor writes artist to apologize for
inadvertent use of comic book image
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2002/thomas.html
An MIT student, are we? Hmm?
If you had bothered to read the article, you would have seen that the MIT image is a straight cut-and-paste touchup job, using scans from Radix.
You'd think a prestigious university would be able to fork out the couple of hundred bucks it'd take to get an original illustration, especially since they were trying to get a $50 million grant, but apparently they're just as clueless as Joe Sixpack who downloads MP3s from Gnutella "because they're free".
This public apology is featured on their news page. See the press release here
Just another example of how timely /. can be at times
;-)
heck even RFN has followed this
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I seriously doubt Prof. Thomas' daughter is a professional graphic designer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she's a high-school kid who just knows how to use Photoshop.
That not what Professor Thomas says in his email to the Lai's.
It was a last minute decision, and I asked my daughter, a graphic artist, to provide an image.
Use of another's photos in comps of ads for clients can be subject to fees and transgressing as you describe can, and has, caused the transgressor to be spanked in court on more than one occasion.
...
Because, as you point out, it is "swiping" (more formally known as "stealing") another's work.
The pricing guide I use for sales specifically lists "presenation to client when artwork is not used in the final product" as a billable event