Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers create Press Plagiarist Of The Year Award
mccalli writes "The BBC is reporting that certain bloggers, fed up of seeing their work just lifted by the mainstream press, have created The Press Plagiarist Of The Year award. Examples are given of national newspapers simply cutting and pasting entire articles from web sites and passing them off as their own."
I absolutely agree! Here's my take on it:
Lots of people have been taking this very seriously, well media studies students are taking this seriously. Earnest discussions in academia are all very well, but who are the guilty ones? Let Guido remind you of the nomination criteria: a story has to be pinched from an original blog source, either verbatim or in essence, and no credit / payment given to the original source. This qualifies as plagiarism. Similar stories on subjects eliciting similar comments do not pass this test, since even lazy journalists can have the same ideas as brilliant bloggers.
You just pasted that entire headline straight from the article!
really 867993
Karma schkarma
This is MY take on it:
Lots of people have been taking this very seriously, well media studies students are taking this seriously. Earnest discussions in academia are all very well, but who are the guilty ones? Let Guido remind you of the nomination criteria: a story has to be pinched from an original blog source, either verbatim or in essence, and no credit / payment given to the original source. This qualifies as plagiarism. Similar stories on subjects eliciting similar comments do not pass this test, since even lazy journalists can have the same ideas as brilliant bloggers.
So THAT'S what people mean when they say, "I researched it online."
A-Bomb
How can you say that about journalists? PROFESSIONAL journalists, as they will quickly insist?
Obviously the bloggers have stolen the stories from the mainstream media, then traveled back in time so they could post the stories "first" and thus embarrass the MSM.
(Seriously, I'm sure that it's happening. But I wouldn't put some bloggers past copying material from other sources and then backdating it in an effort to make themselves look "connected".)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Blog = Google topic + Paste links + Add opinions from my over inflated ego; That is so much better than edit, copy, paste news
Bytes - IT Community
... one of the most famous Hungarian online journal, Index.hu . Whenever I see a technology news there, I know that it appeared in Slashdot four hours before.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
I mean, with all the quality control, detailed background search, and preservation of journalistic ethics that goes into their work, they just don't have any time anymore to actually write their own stories. And that's not even taking into account all the time that those poor, overworked journalists have to invest in being talking heads on various television shows and "news" programs, all the hors-d'oeuvres they have to consume at Washington and New York parties with important people, and all the fake book reviews they have to write for their own books on Amazon.
I mean, seriously...how many stories has Slashdot lifted from other tech sites?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
...it appeared on Slashdot three days earlier.
HEYY-OHHHHHHH!
Breakfast served all day!
Very much the same thing.
Exactly the same thing.
Word for word...
Wait a minute!! The BBC ripped off my blog!
It should have been obvious that the media were just lifting blog entries, when the Sunday Times ran their groundbreaking editorial entitled "OMG OMG WTF R U TLAKING ABOUT?1111!!"
It also qualifies as copyright violation. This is PRECICELY what copyright is for.
Under the Berne convention and laws implementing it, such postings are born copyrighted, notice or no. Verbatim lifting of the entire text, or the bulk of it, is not fair use.
And while a net posting is intended to be read, it's intended to be read on the original site and in its original context. Posting may imply consent for the copying necessary for viewing, network cacheing, linking, and probably indexing and archiving. But it doesn't imply permission to copy it into a commercial (or even non-commercial) news medium without either payment or credit.
When the intent is just to get the news out and such copying would thus be welcomed, the author can explicitly waive his rights or grant additional permissions under stated terms by a footnote license or declaration. (Indeed, such grants are common - Public Domain, open document, quote-with-credit, etc.) In the absense of such a grant, copyright applies full force.
Such an author may receive only small or intangible benefit from his posting in its original place. Such benefits might be reputation, increased public influence, or in increase in traffic to a web site driving advertising revenue or advancing some other purpose of the site. But that doesn't mean copying his material does little damage. If the item is newsworthy and sufficiently well-formed for publication, it is as potentially saleable to news outlets as similar output from a person who makes his living as a reporter. This revenue is denied the author if the publisher simply copies the text without payment - or a reporter passes it off as his own work, receiving his paycheck while the author gets nothing.
Under copyright it is the author's right to demand whatever payment he wants and refuse permission unless agreement is reached. And if a publisher copies his work without permission, it is his right to sue for the damages - including the price he might have reasonably negotiated - and for a statutory minimum if he can't prove a higher amount is due.
Lots of people have been taking this very seriously, well media studies students are taking this seriously.
I should hope the publishers are taking this seriously, too. They're the ones with their necks on the legal block. Every winner of this award (and every nominee) is a potential loser of a big lawsuit. And if the first one isn't open-and-shut, once it's one the rest will be.
The irony, of course, is that it's the same media corporations that make such a screech about "piracy" of their entertainment content that operate the publications where this infringement is taking place. If they don't want to be hoist on their own petard they need to do some serious housecleaning among their own operations.
= = = = =
And before the peanut gallery opens up with some snide comments claiming hypocracy on the part of slashdot posters, let me point out a few things:
1) I'm not stating a personal opinion about what's RIGHT in the above. I'm just pointing out my understanding of the CURRENT LAW. (Note: IANAL.)
2) The posters on this forum, and the members of movements commonly associated with it, are individuals with varying opinions. And there are multiple groups with differing consensus opinions hanging out here as well. Different posters with different opinions do not make the forum hypocritical.
3) "Intellectual Property" (government limitations on ideas, their expression, and their use) is not a unified all-or-nothing issue. There are a host of component parts. (Examples: Copyright versus patent. Length of protection. Extent of protection (what constitutes "fair use"). What is covered (software, "look-and-feel", public performance, N-note-sequences, .
OT - Should something created by a total idiot be considered "Intellectual Property?"