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."
after all, Roland Pipsqueak could have been a contender! [/rocky balboa]
Sue them
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
As a blogger (I actually started "blogging" almost 15 years ago on my BBS), I believe that the entire idea behind copyright is pretty lame. The income of bloggers comes from 3 mechanisms that really don't make copyright as important, and I think in the future we'll see some interesting google anti-"plagiarism" tools.
Bloggers can make their money from ad revenue (adsense and the like), subscriptions and donations. A good blogger can easily make a low 5-figure income if they're good about consistency. Blogger information tends to be very real-time (even non-editorial pieces). Few bloggers publish book-style information, although this is growing. The audience of a blogger is sometimes one-time visitors, but the goal is repeat visitors. Blogs without repeat visitors in my opinion are failures (but this is disputable).
I believe that google or a competitor is on the verge of "This page is almost identical to" style cross-linking. If an online newspaper posts an exact copy of a blog, or a book author rips off a paragraph from another, the browser toolbars will make short work of noticing it. We are very close with search engine heuristic research to take bigger snapshots than just "completely naked MILF" search tags.
For a blogger to get copied without recognition, I can understand the anger. A newspaper stole their information! So what. The newspaper is dead. All a blogger has to do is mention who is quoted them (verbatim in some cases) and use it to build their following. Sure, being quoted in print might make it hard to find, and if you aren't referenced, then the paper is making income from your work, but NO newspaper could exist for very long strictly on "robbing" content.
Take advantage of the free press even if they don't mention you. Bloggers have something similar to a newspaper in proving they wrote it first: caching search engines and "look backwards" web archives. All you need to do is make sure your blog is getting captured, and you can easily prove to your visitors that you've been quoted in the Floor Avenue Journal.
I'm still baffled by the concept that anyone still thinks you can say anything meaningful about the content of a blog beyond "it's a series of articles presented in a chronological order".
When you say something like you did, what do you picture as "blogs"? Teenage diaries? Summaries of news from elsewhere? In-depth technical articles? Personal opinions about various topics? The content could be anything. The term "blog" merely refers to how it is structured and updated. So attempting to pass judgement on the quality of the content of "blogs" is meaningless.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
, but I have yet to read a blog rather than stumbling upon one by mistake, I just don't find diary's that interesting I suppose.
I have been reading this guy's stuff for a couple years, and it's already happened to him a couple times. Just recently, there was a radio guy that stole his piece about Cameron Diaz : http://maddox.xmission.com/.
I think part of the problem is that most of the print press doesn't realize how many people actually read this stuff. Maddox has a counter on each of his articles that shows unique visitors, and at the time of this radio guy ripping him off, this article already had 312,000 visitors, and over 100 million total for his site.
A Haiku: my language choices/assembler pascal lisp c/old school programmer
Virtually every morning TV and Radio show gets their matierial from bloggers and pseudo reporters.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That's simply not true. I gave examples earlier. Do you think somebody who writes about web development is "saying basically the same thing" about somebody writing about politics? Do you think those people are "saying basically the same thing" as the teenager writing about what happened to them in school that day?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You don't understand,
Why is it that those that understand least start their posts with that phrase? Copying a press release in its entirety is perfectly ok. It is not ok to copy it and change the attribution from AP or Reuters to George the Reporter. The issue raised by the GP is not about copying the press release. It is about attributions.
Learn to love Alaska
all this critique from bloggers is more than a little hypocritical. who do bloggers always cite as their primary source of information? why, the very mainstream journalists they decry. the notion that hobbyist bloggers can ever replace professional journalists is absurb -- at least, until bloggers start doing their own primary research. that is, doing the things that journalists do. calling up sources -- haranguing sources, often, when they don't want to talk -- doing background research and, last but not least, finding out what's going on in the world and should be reported on without relying on the media to tell you. i'd like to see all these try to figure out what's going on in the world without having the easy benefit of being able to surf to cnn, nytimes, etc. go out there and pound the pavement. see how easy it is.
It's only plagarism if the press release author cares. My wife and I are artists, and we've put out press releases before about projects we've completed, awards we've won, new services from our business, etc, and we're very pleased when they appear verbatim in the newspaper, since we wrote them truthfully, accurately, and in ways that flatter us. You're not going to find press release authors who are upset their work is "plagarised," since they've written exactly what they want to appear in the news media!
That said, it would be a good thing for reporters to do a little fact-checking. We've never lied in any of our press releases, but since nobody ever checked on any of them, I could have said I just got elected King of Siam and they'd run it...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
As a journalist I have a little inside information for you: sometimes this happens and it's not plagiarism. Let me explain the logic:
The author of the press release has no problem with you copying his or her material. In fact, he or she would prefer it. Press releases are worded in the best possible terms for the company sending them out. So some journalists see no problem using that material. And this isn't plagiarism (technically) since the author of the press release understands and, indeed, hopes it will happen (OED definition of plagiarism: "the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another."). Sometimes journalists borrow certain descriptions because the authors, being authorities on the topic (or at least having access to authorities on the topic), know how to phrase things in the most accurate terms.
I, as well as most journalists, don't do this and, in fact, look down on it. But some see no problem with it. And technically it's not plagiarism.
And also, most good journalists, if they do this, will append the statement with "according to the company's press release" which I consider to be an acceptable practice if used sparingly with subjects, such as scientific terminology, that can lose meaning in the translation from the press release to the journalist's writing.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought you'd be interested.
Major premise: Passing off bloggers' (or anyone else's) work as one's own is unprofessional, often illegal, and plain bad. Granted.
Minor premise: Bloggers and other non-professionals are way, way, way more commonly guilty of this than professional journalists are, especially those from reputable sources, i.e. old-school print journalism.
I once was a newspaper reporter myself, strictly local, quite small-time, and I guaran-damn-tee you I found my stuff (or more accurately, my employer's stuff) ripped off by bloggers and other folks online, messageboards and what have you, all the time, approximately [infinity] more than I stole material, which of course I never did.
Non-professionals just don't have the ethics background that keeps the vast majority of mainstream reporters from going anywhere near plagiarism. Yes, it's much more obvious when people with a megaphone do it and yes, those folks are getting paid for it while amateurs (at least usually) are not, but let's not kid ourselves.
Professionals with their heads screwed on straight just don't do this, which is why "press scandals" are not only rare but highly visible. Non-professionals, no matter their influence on the news culture and competitive pressure on mainstream media, are far more prone to plagiarism.
How about we nominate a Blog Plagiarist of the Year too?
It you look at the history of /. you will see that it is indeed a blog. And by your definition the BoingBoing lies about itself by calling itself a blog, since there are more than one maintainer. Ditto with any Blogspot account with multiple maintainers (there is a lot). My old sight used to use a blog for update information, there were 10 people who could post, and therefore it was no longer a blog? A blog simply lists stories in a reverse chronological order, usually has shorter update times, and shorter entries. It doesn't matter how the stories are selected. Welcome to CmdrTaco's blog!
/.'s frontpage and most blogs, it would be hard to tell the difference. Date. K. Author. K. Comments? K. Jingoistic title supporting a view? K. See, /. is a slightly more sophisticated version of a blogger account.
I don't think code base matters too much either, being that you can have multiple code-bases leading to the same format. If you take a gander at
What makes Slashcode different? Really?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Slashdot is just about the archetypical blog. When the word was coined, Slashdot was right up there as one of the prime examples used to explain what the hell it meant.
>A blog's text is written and controlled by an individual
No - some (most?) blogs are written by an individual. There are plenty of blogs that are run by a team.
> Contrast the blog, centered topically on its own maintainer
No. A blog is centered on the maintainer or the interests of its maintainer.
There are political blogs, technical blogs, blogs about movies, blogs about books, blocks about knitting, blogs about pretty much anything. A blog is not necesarliy a personal diary.
And guess what - slashdot is centred topically on the interests of its maintainers.
The topics are not selected by its readers, they are suggested by its readers. The maintainers select suggested stories, or post their own, and often include their own comentary.
There have also been plenty of "focused on the maintainer" posts in the past. From Taco's proposal, through to recently, Taco ranting about having is WoW character name banned.
There has also been plenty of self-indulgent comentary, just look back for any of John Katz's articles.
I think people confuse online diaries and blogs too much. An online diary is often a type of web log, but it is _not_ the only definition, and never has been.
Advanced users are users too!
1) Blogging will be outlawed
or
2) Megabucks Media incorporated will lift stories with impunity... then sue the living daylights out of whatever damn fool Blogger originally put up the work.. ."
As to (1), how do you figure blogging will be outlawed? Blogging is really just a form of writing, with distribution via the Internet. The newsmedia is already being forced to change how they do business, based on what bloggers have been doing. Thousands if not millions of people freely express their opinions online without any trouble, and given that outlawing blogging would be akin to outlawing newspapers, there is no way news media professionals would get behind such a prohibition anyway. They depend on freedom of speech, and they know restricting it would run counter to their own interests. Beyond that, even if they were interested in outlawing blogging somehow, even the most righteous social conservative would be firmly opposed to this. For every muck-raking blog, there is a dittohead blog. The Bush Administration is having a tough enough time selling its own party on its main agenda items these days. Attempting to outlaw blogs would be an absurd diversion that would quickly get shot down.
As to your second assumption, news organizations have to sell to advertisers and the public. It's how they stay alive. They know that if they were to actually countersue a blogger, when they were the plagiarists, the truth would out. They still have to sell ad space. They still have to convince people reading or watching the news that they follow ethical guidelines. Look at the damage that has been done to the NYT with all of their recent high-profile ethics problems. One news outfit might sue a blogger, but if they're in the wrong, the courts will find for the blogger. The legal system has its problems, but it is not so screwed up that little guys can't win when the facts are in their favor. The hit to credibility in such a case would be huge, and all of the other mainstream media companies would act as quickly as possible to distance themselves from that sort of behavior.
Civil liberties have been taking a hit for the last four years, but the Bill of Rights still has force. Plus, judging by the opinion polls, even the voters who brought Bush into office are starting to realize that his fear-based policies don't make any sense. I think Americans are easily swayed in the short term, but in the long term they won't buy the argument that dissent must be muzzled and big business should get its way regardless of the consequences.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I stopped reading/listening/believing what came out of the Big Money Mouthpiece years ago. There are only two reasons to pay attention to Big Media. . .
1. To look for slipped truths through comparative readings of the same story/information as published by several different groups and outlets.
2. To see what herding techniques are being used on the population and thereby get a heads-up and prepare for whatever new scam is coming down the pike. The "Avian Flu Virus" bugaboo is an excellent case in point. When that much media hype is unleashed, your Goebbels Alarm should start ringing like crazy.
So if Big Media starts cutting and pasting your blog content, perhaps you should take a second look at what you're publishing. If your message is pure, chances are you'll be ignored or marginalized rather than given the seal of authoritarian approval. Just a thought.
-FL