Canada's Conference Board Found Plagiarizing Copyright Report

An anonymous reader writes "There is a storm brewing in Canada as the prestigious Conference Board of Canada has been caught plagiarizing US copyright lobby group documents in a report on copyright reform. The report was funded by the Canadian copyright lobby as well as by the Ontario government. The Conference Board has acknowledged some errors, but stands by the report, while the Ontario government admits spending thousands of dollars and it now wants some answers."

Comments

Re:Canadian Law

[topham]

The requirements to bring charges in Canadian courts do not only rest with the Police and the crown. There is a process by which you can file charges and have them assessed and, potentially prosecuted without police involvement.

This isn't the normal process, and it is heavily discouraged but an incident a few years ago where an individual who was being prosecuted hard a charge of treason brought forward against a judge confirms it. The charge was not pursued as another judge overseas the process and it was without cause; but the point is that police do not have to be involved.

Re:What is the Conference Board of Canada?

[Colonel Korn]

As a Canadian, my first reaction to reading this story on /. was "what is the prestigious Conference Board of Canada?" I mean, I know what the "Ontario government" is and the "US copyright lobby" and "Canadian copyright lobby" are self-explanatory terms, but I'm not familiar with the Conference Board of Canada. When I read it here, I thought maybe it was an agency of the federal government.

Anyway, I little digging turns up that the Conference Board of Canada is basically a non-profit think-tank, that is funded on a per-service basis. So private groups and governments will pay it to research a topic and publish a paper on it. It also holds conferences and does research reports on its own. According to their official website, their areas of expertise are "running conferences", "conducting, publishing, and disseminating research", "economic trends", and "public policy issues". It is affiliated, but legally separate from, the U.S./international "The Conference Board, Inc. of New York".

They state: "Objective and non-partisan. We do not lobby for specific interests."

A "think tank" is just a group of non-experts who organize expert-produced information despite their lack of qualifications and understanding of the topics they discuss. They can dig up sources satisfactorily, but they get into serious trouble when they try to draw conclusions. Friends don't let friends believe a word written in a think tank.

Re:You reap what you sow

[R2.0]

"By that time the only two things keeping you in school at all are the fact that there's an awful lot of paperwork involved in having you expelled, and that your professor may still feel sorry for you. Your best bet is to admit everything, tell a mildly sad story about how you were running out of time and panicked, and then never do it again. "

Right on, Brother!

I used to grade homework assignments for an Intro to Practical Logic course, and about 1-2x/semester I'd find 2 assignments that were obviously the product of "collaboration" - and no, it was not encouraged. Typically, I'd be grading a stack and would come on a paper that was not only badly wrong, but idiosyncratically wrong - trains of logic that would take contorted paths to prove "A=-A". I'd grade it, pull the next one, and lo and behold there's the exact same train of convoluted logic. I'd grade that and then paperclip them together and give them to the professor with a note to the effect that I believe the students were cheating. And the consequences to the students were...nothing.

Not a thing. Wasn't even mentioned to them. The professor basically didn't want to be bothered. Keep in mind that I only passed through the most flagrant examples - there were plenty I suspected (correct answers but word-for-word identical) but didn't pass through. I mean, Lord knows I wasn't a saint, but at least TRY to cover your tracks, please. Think of the graders!

Re:You reap what you sow

[canajin56]

For coding courses, all our code goes through electronic marking before it reaches the marker. Students know that the electronic marking is looking for cheaters. Given this, they think they can to a Replace All on variable names and get away with it. They can't. They also try to confuse it by putting what are essentially NOPs, like "x = x;" or "x = x + 0;" That might work (but it doesn't) but its certainly bizarre enough to get the attention of the human marker. But still, the instructors let is slide, it's a lot of paperwork, and always leads to parents threatening to sue, demanding their right to a fair trial, face their accuser, get a refund on tuition, etc.