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Plagiarizing Wikipedia For Profit
An anonymous reader sends word of a dustup involving the publisher John Wiley and Sons and Wikipedia. Two pages from a Wiley book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a verbatim copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers bombing. This is the publisher that touched off a fair use brouhaha earlier this year when they threatened to sue a blogger who had reproduced a chart and a table (fully attributed) from one of their journals.
...losses, when they give away their work? This is an interesting aspect of free license law that hasn't really been delved into yet.
_____
Thank you.
According to law, they are doing nothing illegal and are even protecting their own legal rights. This is what happens when law dictates human behaviour, instead of morals. Precisely this situation Plato envisioned when he said that good men need no laws to tell them how to behave, and evil men will find ways around the laws.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
if it is unattributed, its plagiarism - passing off someone else's work for urs
Perhaps an imaginative programmer out there will develop a "De-Plagiarize" application and port it to all platforms. Paste the text or graph into the box and out pops a perfect paraphrase.
(Profit?)
Although the author of the linked page says he wrote much of the disputed text and released it into public domain, the license governing Wikipedia is GNU FDL, as can be seen by a link at the bottom of every page. The combined work, because it includes work by others, is covered by that license.
:)
If Wiley published this text without citing the FDL, they're in violation of it. Seems pretty clear. Further, the license says that if the work is modified, the resulting document must also be released in FDL, according to section 4. This is where it gets interesting.
If it's unattributed, its plagiarism -- passing off someone else's work for yours
The Wikipedia link discusses the problem of bringing copyright violation charges. But, even if it is released in the public domain, the problem for the publisher and author is the charge of plagiarism.
Many high-profile authors have been brought down by charges of plagiarism. They have not been sued for copyright violations but they have suffered significant consequences nonetheless. See, for example, the recent case of Kaavya Viswanathan. As such, I would think that the copyright violation angle can be pretty much ignored. It's distracting and weak. The plagiarism charge, however, could have significant consequences.
with the applications where teachers submit papers into a plagiarism database (I cannot remember the name.. its 6AM), if two students use the same program, the second one is going to get busted for plagiarism anyway.. unless there is some randomness built in the sentence structure and words used.
Is it plagiarism if I make up something, post it in Wikipedia, write an academic paper, and cite the reference I previously had made up?
As the incredibly-talented sci-fi writer Bob Unherdof said to his struggling burger-flipper friend George Lucas in 1975....
...you could make an analogy to embedded software. If I were to include busybox, unmodified, into my device (which is still GPLV2 AFAIK) I don't have the obligation to divulge and make available my complete system's sourcecode, only that of busybox.
:) (IANAL)
As the sourcecode here is essentially the wikipedia text, they are already complying more or less, right ? Then again, perhaps they are not embedding, but linking the text to their sourcecode and compiling that into a deliverable/book in which case everything turns GPL
Very interesting indeed.
This article is tagged "thief". I thought it was standard /. wisdom that copyright infringement isn't theft?
Anyway, are we sure that the text is from Wikipedia, and not both from a third source? It's probably unlikely, but "they copied from Wikipedia" is far from the only explanation.
if it is unattributed, its plagiarism - passing off someone else's work for urs ... hehehehe sorry.
How about the fact that the license explicitly gives them the right to? We have all the laws there to assign any license you wish to your work, to fit whatever moral rules you wish.
Find it distasteful for example that someone would use your work for profit? Fine! Put a "not for commercial use" clause on it then. Or put the BSD "thou shalt give credit" license on it. Or whatever you wish.
But if you chose to place your work under, say, the Creative Commons, you've just told the world at large, "here, take it and use it as you wish, I don't want anything in return, I don't forbid anything, have fun with it." So please have the _decency_ then to not act enraged when someone does just that. You _had_ all the framework you needed to protect it in any other way, and you chose explicitly not to. People are doing exactly what you officially told them it's ok.
Or do you think it's morally superior to make an U-turn on your word there. "See, I said you could use it, but I didn't _really_ mean it. Now let me tell you retroactively the _real_ conditions that I want you to obey. And let me call you names, while I'm at it." It's like me telling you that, sure, you can use my ballpoint pen, and then retroactively making a fuss that you used it to sign a cheque and trying to impose conditions retroactively. See, I thought it would be self-evident that it's only for non-commercial stuff and that you must worship the ground I walk on for letting you do that.
No, the problem isn't with laws vs morals, it's with idiot utopians getting surprised that the world doesn't work like their utopian fantasy world, and that they've been preaching a stupidity all along. Again: you had your chance to impose any morals and conditions on using your work as you can possibly wish for. If you chose to essentially waive all rights and demands, it's pretty damn stupid to expect everyone to somehow just know that you don't _really_ mean that. It's not exploiting some obscure legal loophole, it's doing what that license explicitly told them that it's allowed.
Briefly: if you explicitly chose a license that, essentially, goes contrary to your morals/beliefs/sense-of-justice, then it's not the world at large who's callous and immoral when they obey that license. It's you who's too fucking stupid to even know what you really want.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Those fuckers should be expelled and then sent to gJuan Tanamo.
There are (or were) at least two articles in Wikipedia that are my texts (from my site) with slight variations on sentences. So whoever visits those Wikipedia articles (or did so in the past) and then my pages must come to the conclusion that I stole the stuff from Wikipedia without giving credit. I can't even prove that because I don't have a public version history, and archive.org is spotty when it comes to my site.
In this case (Wiley book) the articles were there way before the book, so the case seems to be clear, but in general, I recommend to keep an open mind about who copied where.
John Wiley and Sons could just edit the wikipedia article to be different. Problem solved.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
...was unfortunately deleted by an overzealous editor who argued that the issue did not meet notability criteria.
These stories are free but worth money.
Don't buy any Wiley books, ever. Never seen a good one from them anyway.
Validity of lawsuit claims
In press reports, the RIAA makes the assertion that every unauthorized copy of a song represents a lost sale. [69][70][71] This claim is highly criticized due to the fact that a single download of a song may not correspond to the loss of a potential sale. A large number of studies conducted since the RIAA began its campaign against peer-to-peer file-sharing have concluded that losses incurred per download range from negligible to very small.[72][73][74]
[edit] Unfair legal practices
In one file-sharing case, the RIAA has been referred by the defendants as "a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have".
See, e.g. UMG v. Lindor[75], where the RIAA has moved to "strike" those accusations. The motion to strike the charges is pending, and is scheduled to be taken under consideration by the Court on October 2, 2007.
From what Wikipedia says they can copy Wikipedia at their pleasing as long as they cite it, provide a link back to the content (which should be in the citation), and provide a copy of the text should anyone request it. I would imagine them a form letter directing the user to the Wikipedia revision would be reasonable, until a point where Wikipedia closes.
I'm sure that rarely people would make a big deal about providing the text, since the link is indeed cited.
They're not giving ANYTHING away. They're licensing a copy of their product to you, under certain conditions.
Wiley made my EE intro to circuits book. 1) there were many mistakes, on 3rd edition run. 2) you had to purchase the answer manual seperately. Ordering it got you a cheap, useless book and a registration card for their online system to actually get the answers. The site made it difficult to save the answers, and the registration expired after 1 year. Yeah, scumbags.
I would submit that Wikipedia contains more plagarism than any one textual work ever created.
So someone copied Wikipedia?
Meh.
- Plato forgot that most men (and women) are neither good nor evil. Most people "blow with the wind", meaning that they don't have a strong sense of morals and/or ethics. Law (good, bad or indifferent) provides that for them.
- Remember too, to "blow with the wind", is neither good nor bad, it is however adaptable. People will adapt to good laws, bad laws or indifferent laws. Adapting includes "gaming the system". Those that don't adapt, generally suffer unpleasant consequences.
- On the other hand, from an evolution stand-point, adaptable is "good".
- Ultimately it is the quality of the laws that matter. And, as laws generally are usually no better than those people who make the laws, God help those entities whose political structure attracts the worst of people.
So basically you make my point, the way I see it. There _are_ plenty of licenses and flavours to choose, to fit whatever moral code you like. Whether they're called Creative Commons or not, there are already plenty to choose from, and you can even create your own if neither fits your moral principles. The only people left moaning retroactively about morality-vs-legality are the ones who were too stupid to choose the right license. In which case, it's not the world at large or the rule of the law that's at fault there.
That's all I'm saying.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Does anyone have a link to the full text of the book so we can judge for ourselves?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The paraphrase of Plato from the grandparent post may not have addressed Plato's opinion of most people being neither completely good or completely evil, but if you're even passingly acquainted with Plato's works you should realize that he fully understands laws as being there for the people in the middle.
And I think your estimation of the quality of laws being key is mistaken. I might agree that high quality laws combined with a high quality enforcement process would make a tremendous impact. But as it stands, culture and mores tend to matter much more. For example, would theft rates go up if stealing was not forbidden by the law? Perhaps, but I'm not so certain.
Plagiarism database, do your worst!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wiley are not responsible for copyright infringement in the stuff the publish. They can't possibly be expected to check all of the work submitted by every author against every other known source. They do ask authors to sign a warranty that the work that is submitted for publication is not somebody else's intellectual property. So if the authors did this, and signed it off as their own, then it's the authors fault.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How do they claim damages?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
He's obviously referring to the legal system.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Simple: copy the text into Google Language, convert it to French, copy the result back into the input box, and convert it back to English.
If we have a stethoscope for the minds of various characters involved at different time, it could be like this:
A year later...
I once had a signature.
I suspect that it is a stretch, and highly unlikely, that this book made a profit. I get your point, but I think that language was unnecessarily inflammatory.
... but they seem to have lost their "clean hands" advantage here.
So there's no one in jail, then?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Could you not do this very thing by changing the artist section of the ID3 tag to your struggling band, rather than the one who released the MP3?
should have been the subject. Because at the end of the day, why do it if it's not fun.
That and subjects ought to be memetically correct, dammit.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
But. . .how can you have profit with out ??? ?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
First, when Joe Public infringes, he generally does so for himself. When Bob Corporate does, it's for the world at large.
Second, Bob Corporate usually gets away with it. If Joe Public is caught, he faces heavy, personal penalties. Bob Corporate can simply have Bob Corporate Inc cover the damage, assuming that they're caught at all and that they lose in court.
Finally, we take great delight in finding a similar double-standard in Bob Corporate. This company, for instance, went after someone else for a fairly sizable quote (with attribution), and we now find them stealing wholesale (with no attribution). This seems almost second nature to most corporations -- in fact, I forget where it was, but I seem to remember reading someone psychoanalyzing a corporation (as if it were a human) and finding that it's insane.
Which comes back to "A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Another amusing difference between Joe Public and Bob Corporate.
This is far worse than normal infringement, because when I infringe copyright, I'm honest about it, and so are millions of others. We know what we're doing, and we don't try to cover it up. We give credit to the creator.
These entities, on the other hand (the example in the FA, the plagiarism of the Wiki by The Times of India, and many others) are worse - they do not even acknowledge the source. They do not give the creator due credit. Not only do they infringe copyright and break the law, they also try to pass off others' work as their own - something that file-sharers and other "personal use" infringers do not do. Not only that, they actually profit from it - which is precisely what copyright law was originally supposed to prevent.
In fact, given this context, the state should come down much harder on these entities than on simple "personal use" infringers, because the prevention of such abuses is the very purpose of copyright law in the first place.
who's to say the author of the wikipedia entry didn't actually copy his or her own work in to the wikipedia verbatim?
to NOT sound like everything you write is uncorroborated and unsupported supposition?
When I write on my blogs or for my podcast, I publish the links web pages or to Amazon book purchasing links where I got my information. (If nothing else, it makes me look like I'm well read.)
That way, if there is a problem with the source, I can tell people to stop arguing with me and take the problem up with my source.
If my sources turn out to be wrong, I can apologize for getting misled without having to defend the thought processes that led to the point of contention.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
In the United States, copyright infringement that meets specific guidelines is a crime, and the Department of Justice can press charges even for an orphaned work. The defendant can argue that it had a license, or that it is covered under a defense listed in sections 107 through 122 of the copyright statute, but this has to be compelling enough to raise reasonable doubt among members of a jury.
What country were you talking about?
- except it was an application included on a CD in David Pogue's Palm PDA book:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/palmpilot/
- my client's simple license clearly stated 'no distribution on media without permission,' but it was included...
- i never busted o'reilly's chops about it, 'cause i met him one time at a Perl conference in Monterey and he was very nice to me...
Well, they already reused it.
Seems fitting that the publisher, and the author, would have to allow this book to be freely released under the GFDL, with an addendum saying the attribution.
Slashdot's readership is a large heterogeneous group. Individual readers have widly varying opinions on intellectual property law and language. Pretending that Slashdot's readership is of a single mind and insinuating that the resulting hive-mind is being hypocritical isn't clever, it just makes you an ass.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Indeed, and I am reminded of Linus' letter on how the GPL creates value rather than destroys it.
The same principles apply here. The licence was designed so that people receive the value of other peoples copyrighted works. The author has spat on this. There's the loss that the grandparent can't see.
One has to wonder why the publishers didn't release the book under the GNU FDL in the first place. The book is a printed material. The GNU FDL doesn't change that. Copying physical books is not a common activity and, when it does occur, is usually done by penny-less students who only need a few pages to study for a test. I doubt that many people who fall into the intended target market for this book would bother to stand over a photo-copier for hours, even if it were legal - they'd just buy a copy. Perhaps the publisher didn't *read* the license and assumed that the material was "free as in free beer." If that's the case, they deserve to pay for their ignorance, let alone the insult to the free community of the intarweb.
"Legal action" is so vague it's ridiculous. What were they planning on suing him for, exactly?
Copyright infringement is the only thing that makes even the slightest amount of sense here, except that fair use is an exemption to copyright infringement, so if one's purpose is fair use, while they've copied without permission, they haven't actually infringed on copyright, so no law is broken, and no damage is recognized by the courts as being caused.
So if not copyright infringement, what, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
He's obviously referring to the legal system.
You can't seriously be dumb enough to believe that the legal system's never 'delved into' the copyright violation of semi-free content?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I never said that.
Why bother posting without clarifying your position?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.