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Copyright Protection Business Model Expands, Plagiarizes Others
Techdirt has an amusing story about the expanding adoption of the RIAA-style business model of collecting settlement money from threats of litigation based on copyright infringement claims. This story comes with an amusing twist with the two cited companies, Davenport Lyons and ACS, being clearly related and ACS publishing an article with clearly plagiarized selections. Anything to make a buck I guess. "TorrentFreak noticed that an article apparently published by ACS Law was actually plagiarized from a variety of different sources, basically cut and pasted together with no credit or citations given at all. Remarkably, in some cases, articles with the exact opposite view of ACS Law were copied with paragraphs that just had an added sentence to the end which completely contradicted what the original article said."
He with the smartest lawyer wins.
Sounds like this is just ACS's version of the Grey Album.
From David Lyle, Acting Executive Director of ACS Law
To ACS Law Staff
Team,
I'd like to talk to all of you today about a very important issue that is right now affecting our public image. So serious that major news outlets may even pick up on it. It is in regards to our publications on copyright and as members of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, we need to look after each other. We have learned an important lesson today and we must share it with everyone so we can't make the same time wasting mistakes in the future.
That lesson, friends and coworkers, is that violating copyright is totally fucking awesome.
I mean we used to spend how many man-hours on one of these reports? 120? 240? Wasted wasted time. The information is out there just waiting to be copied. At first I thought this brilliant new technology would be expensive. I mean, how much do we spend just on the software that turns our computers on? Nope, just two simple commands: ctrl-c ctrl-p. These are the shake-n-bake methods of success.
That shit we did on Democracy and Voting? Yeah, take note. I just discovered that using this thing called Google will pull up page upon page of data that is as good as if not better than the crap we've been slaving over! Ever heard of a site called blackboxvoting.org? Fire up the goddamn presses. Frank LoMonte, that piece you did on the First Amendment was good. But Wikipedia's article is better. Next time save yourself the trouble, they're practically giving the stuff away out there--work smarter and faster people. Don't work harder.
And if any of you pansies come up to me like our now ex-employee Jenkins did about credit and citations, you'll be getting a citation yourself. You'll be fired. Now that's a citation. I just wrote a five hundred page report on the Second Amendment in five minutes, I don't have time for citations. Hell, you're lucky I don't fire the team that figured this out months ago and didn't tell us! I mean, we're a team people. We need to work together.
And if you're worried about the media, don't be. I've already bragged to them about this and told them they should pull their heads out of their asses and use it. Maybe that's why they're all dying business models? Ever think of that? This shit's free and they're paying for it. Morons. And the real icing on the cake is that since this hit the news, page views has tripled. It's fucking win/win no matter how you look at it.
I'll bet you think I'm a chump typing all this out when I could have just ctrl-c ctrl-p from The Onion and if you caught that, good for you. I'm still learning here, let's grow together.
Your friend and boss,
David Lyle, Acting Executive Director of ACS Law
My work here is dung.
It's about time those RIAA lawyers went after the REAL criminals - those dang RIAA lawyers!!!
Hitchhiker's Guide made a killing by copying information off of a cereal box, passing it through a wormhole to an early time, and then suing the cereal company.
From this the term "Future Perfect" was dropped.
I would propose that the term "Present Imperfect" is currently too fitting.
Yeah, but did you all hear that TorrentFreak noticed that an article apparently published by ACS Law was actually plagiarized from a variety of different sources, basically cut and pasted together with no credit or citations given at all? Remarkably, in some cases, articles with the exact opposite view of ACS Law were copied with paragraphs that just had an added sentence to the end which completely contradicted what the original article said.
take a cue from Slashdot...
Plagiarized articles would be modded -1 redundant.
hmm £600 thats about what getty and corbis ask when people use their images without permission. It there some standard legal fee that adds up to that amount somewhere?
who are trying most diligently to make mass money off of copyright claims, tend to know the least about copyright law and the way it is supposed to work.
has more lawyers then the entire country of Japan, I think I know were our problems really lay.
I guess I'm just wiped from working on a bibliography (in MLA format) for my eight-year-old last night.
You should have just copied and pasted....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Monsanto has applied for a patent on pigs here and here
They are also seeking to enforce these patents on independant farms across the globe.
Don't just take my word for it - a small investment of your time will yield sufficient information to scare the hell out of anyone who can really see where this is going..
The RIAA was just the start - and all they wanted was our money - Monsanto wants nothing less that to dominate the worlds food supply. And our silence will allow them to succeed.
"The trouble with law is lawyers." - Clarence Darrow :)