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How Plagiarism Helped Win the American Revolution
Hugh Pickens writes "Although today the stigma of lifting passages can haunt media professionals forever, Revolutionary War Historian Todd Andrlik writes that 250 years ago stealing another reporter's work without credit was an acceptable form of journalism. In fact, plagiarism was a practice that helped unite the colonies and win the Revolutionary War. 'Without professional writing staffs of journalists or correspondents, eighteenth-century newspaper printers relied heavily on an intercolonial newspaper exchange system to fill their pages,' writes Andrlik. 'Printers often copied entire paragraphs or columns directly from other newspapers and frequently without attribution. As a result, identical news reports often appeared in multiple papers throughout America. This news-swapping technique, and resulting plagiarism, helped spread the ideas of liberty and uphold the colonists' resistance to British Parliament.' For example, an eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party by 'An Impartial Observer' was first authored for the December 20, 1773, Boston Gazette, but was soon reprinted without edit or attribution in other New England newspapers. News of the Boston Massacre, Battle of Lexington and Concord, the treason of Benedict Arnold and practically every major event of the American Revolution circulated among the colonies much the same way. 'Thanks in no small part to this plagiarism, newspaper printers fanned the flames of rebellion and helped colonists realize the conflict was closer to home than perhaps they wanted to believe.'"
You could write an article about how murder helped win the American revolution. True, but relevant?
So, two and half centuries ago, there were quite different values in place. What's so shocking about it?
I don't have a sig.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/after-review-time-says-fareed-zakarias-plagiarism-was-isolated-incident/
Blogging on paper. It just might work
When the USA had no good authors, Charles Dickens used to be pirated heavily in the USA. http://www.doctorsyntax.net/2010/01/charles-dickens-get-your-cotton-pickin.html
This primed the print industry in the USA. USA started worrying about piracy only after they had their own authors who needed protection.
This is the reason it's hypocritical when the USA complains about piracy in the developing countries.
Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only be sure always to call it please "research"
As others have pointed out, any and all businesses that depend on copyright in the US at one time or another (mostly in their beginnings but some even now) depend upon some form of IP infringement. The movie industry moved from the east coast to the west in order to escape Edison and his patents over the motion picture, for example.
Not much changed. These days newspapers across the world (especially English-language papers) have identical articles too. They just take it from "the wire" and reprint it without any editing usually. I literally see the same articles in a local Hong Kong paper that I see later linked from /. so some US online paper.
The only difference is that nowadays this exchange goes a lot faster, and that papers usually pay for the privilege.
The practise was known as 'boilerplate'. Smaller newspapers would buy printing plates from larger newspapers and only add their own title block and a few local stories. That doesn't mean plagiarism though - it was a sale.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Newspapers of the time could have obtained the same results without any plagiarism (e.g. by hiring field correspondents).
The alleged cause-effect relationship exists only in the author's obviously underpowered mind.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
This is hardly a new problem.
In fact, plagiarism was a practice that helped unite the colonies and win the Revolutionary War. Without professional writing staffs of journalists or correspondents, eighteenth-century newspaper printers relied heavily on an intercolonial newspaper exchange system to fill their pages. Printers often copied entire paragraphs or columns directly from other newspapers and frequently without attribution. As a result, identical news reports often appeared in multiple papers throughout America. For example, an eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party by 'An Impartial Observer' was first authored for the December 20, 1773, Boston Gazette, but was soon reprinted without edit or attribution in other New England newspapers.
So Plagiarism is proved again to be a bad thing then?
Speaks a British royalist and soon to be Canadian citizen. For it would have been far easier to keep these pesky colonists under control if they had not stooped to using dirty tricks to keep cohesion in their fragmented colony.
On the other hand, having studied 18th Century political history the colonists did have valid grievances that were not being addressed and revolution is often the only way to force the issue.
There's a lot to be said here about the ends you're trying to achieve. Getting the news of the Boston Massacre out was more important than who makes the money selling the paper. There's also the consideration that republication happened in markets that weren't competing with the original source newspaper. In a time when horse and buggy was the primary mode of transportation, newspapers in other cities reprinting the stories was just how the story was distributed. There was no way to reach everyone, and telling how atrocious the British were being was everyone's goal.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I don't doubt that plagiarism was the order of the day(even in academia, the idea that plagiarism is a bad thing hardly goes back to the beginning); but I would be curious to know why...
The incentive behind copying things is pretty obvious; but mere copying isn't plagiarism. It takes lack of attribution to get to that level, and the incentive to not attribute isn't nearly as obvious. If I'm a newspaper editor in Baltimore, reprinting a story from a Boston paper, why wouldn't I include "As lately printed in ye Boston Herald" to assure my readers that they were getting authentic coverage from the scene, rather than me making shit up?
I was waiting for this bit of scientific support for liberal laziness. The media ran all these stories during Clinton's troubles on how lying and infidelity were "normal". Now that yet another high-profile liberal rag has been caught plagiarizing, it's "normal" now.
I have some additional arguments that I thought of myself:
So, two and half centuries ago, there were quite different values in place. What's so shocking about it?
and
Newspapers of the time could have obtained the same results without any plagiarism (e.g. by hiring field correspondents).
The alleged cause-effect relationship exists only in the author's obviously underpowered mind.
Now I'm ready to cover the conventions!
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Is this plagiarism or a crude form of syndication?
with stories about plagiarism and how "its okay" or "rooted in history" I wonder at the timing. After all it wasn't like someone at a major news magazine recently got stung. Astroturfing anyone?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Fareed Zakaria has kidnapped samzenpus.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not saying which side it would have been won by, but it would have been won.
Who's to say there was not an agreements in place that allowed the sharing of newspaper articles without attributing to the source, it may be that as long as no one put their name atop the article that it was acceptable with the other papers. Writing anything anti-colonial may not have been attributed to the writer to protect the writer from imprisonment or the gallows. Many of the major newspapers owners did know each other and were sympathetic to the cause so a simple arrangement is a very likely scenario. It is more likely that this was a distributed propaganda network then a shift in plagiarism values. Unless other articles not related to the revolution can be found to be treated in the same way before, during, and after the revolution it would be reckless to call this a change in values.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
It seems copying even went as far as picking a flag...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States#History
If true, why wouldn't it be relevant? It would tell us something about ourselves we should know.
This was not plagiarism. This is how things were done. Calling it plagiarism is demeaning to the efforts made to spread information back then. They didn't have the mass media that we have today. There weren't even analogous syndication services like AP and Reuters to syndicate columns and act as clearing houses for news articles. The societal infrastructure for syndication simply wasn't there. There were no methods for collecting royalties on articles except being paid through the local paper. Stuff got repeated and nobody got their panties in a twist. It's different today, because there are mechanisms in place for attribution and for people to get fairly paid.
Plagiarism is the *wrongful* appropriation of literary content. Back then it wasn't wrongful. Ergo, TFA calling it plagiarism is intellectually dishonest, at best.
--
BMO
So now plagiarism is okay, and a good thing? But, ..., don't we have all these laws against plagiarizing someone else's work? That means it's bad.... But, our founding fathers plagiarized, so that means it's good to .... Hmm... , let me think about this, ...., ...., .....***BOOM!!!*** (head explodes)
...I will put my modern values into the past and judge people based on today's criteria story. If it was accepted practice back then you should STFU. You should also not promote it as a model of how to do things today. You can't go back to that exact time and place.
So let me see if I understand:
Copyright violation helped people resist the rightful government of the time?
Oh THAT'S going to be helpful in the discussion about the need to reduce/limit copyright. /tinfoil hat
-Styopa
I don't think that the missing attribution was relevant to the described effect. Even if proper credit would have been given, the stories would have spread quickly. The implicit connection between plagiarism and the US revolution is simpliy invalid.
I can't count the number of times I've copied some code from a web site and disassembled it to learn how it works. I've never just flat-out cut and pasted code without permission to go on a production site, but that initial copy to learn things would no doubt be considered "plagiarism" (or at the very least copyright infringement) by today's hyper-legal norms.
The free flow of information benefits everyone, but that benefit rarely comes all at once from a single mind. More often, it takes lots of incremental, standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants improvements to make something really valuable. As the founders of the Internet and Linux have shown us, we all get more by giving a little. Better to have 1% of a watermelon than 100% of a raisin.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
If the mother country had been better at enforcing copyright law the whole independence mess could have been avoided and the glorious British Empire might still rule the waves.
Having said that you yanks are doing quite well for yourselves since we gave you your country.
*tongue firmly in cheek, in case you hadn't noticed*
So whats their agenda with this piece?
If this is meant to be a "Why is this on Slashdot"- Well, it's like this: The only way we can know that older societies had different values is if we can read about it. Ok?
Anyway, it's quite interesting that plagiarism is apparently the one thing you can do to get the punishment of shunning. Shunning was the practice of removing an individual from the good graces or even contact of the rest of a given society (whether that be a church, a village, or whatever).
From a NPOV, it's quite interesting that almost every sin that would have resulted in shunning in the old day is now considered not a big deal. On the other hand, since human beings have a need to have some kind of moral base, a new sin (plagiarism) has been devised which if you commit it, you can be banished forever from your journalistic community.
It's just quite interesting that instead of saying that some guy isn't that good of a writer if he can't make up his own stuff, it's supposed that he committed a grave moral sin.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
What happened back then was a change of the by-then-staus-quo. It's not appreciated to change todays' world, so the next generation gets the burden of getting a criminal record for things their fathers and grandfathers did before. But today it is different. My father wanted to change the world back then. And he did. But I want to change his world. And that's not ok.
Yes - This is how the Associated Press was born.
So... We've got VP Joe Biden, Senate Candidate (and faux Indian) Elizabeth Warren, and left leaning CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria all tagged as plagiarists..
Suddenly, we discover plagiarism was commonplace and the American Revolution couldn't have happened without it.
Must be election time, for it smells a little like moral equivalence around here.
This wouldn't get past a peer review.
What do media outlets pay Journalists to do? Do they pay them to have original thoughts, words and ideas, or do they pay them to produce content that gets ratings, hits, and/or views. Tie the content to revenue, and I believe you'll find that originality does not factor into the bottom line. Historically, is there proof that re-using someone else's original words to provide a means to an end has occurred? Certainly. Have people used other people's words without giving them credit? Absolutely. When it comes to getting the information you need, do you care who released the information first, or do you just care that the information is legitimate?
If you release something on the Internet, it is a widely held belief, legal implications aside, that whatever it is (text, picture, video), is now public domain. Sharing is as easy as blowing into a fire to make the flames rise. Whether this information is a newly released trailer for a movie, or a story about kids being bullied in Illinois, or the score of a baseball game, the result of sharing this information is that it gets to an audience that will consume it.
I can tell you, first hand, that it takes much longer to produce original stories, and that many of these original stories go unnoticed in this great big world, because the majority of the outlets where people get their information are just churning out the re-hashed stories over and over again. People would rather have the information quickly and in short blurbs that little time to ingest, than to have it provided in a longer, more original point-of-view.
Most people are too lazy to really find originality and truth in this world. It's out there. I am one of the ones producing it. I will keep producing it, because I believe there is a place for it, and maybe someday, it may even be popular again.
I believe all the reports were attributed to he Sam Pseudonym and none of the other papers had writers claiming the work as their own. Moreover, it appears there was same sharing arrangement between most if not all of the papers involved.
This is not the world's clearest case of plagiarism.
[blah blah blah freedom blah blah blah security from foreign interference blah blah blah.]
~ Excerpts by Thomas Paine
There, how fucking hard was that? This defense of plagiarism is bullshit. Quit stealing, bitches!
If the cheerleader has a gun, why don't the three rapists have one too?
So, three armed serial rapists and an one armed cheerleader. I fail to see how this situation leads to a freer cheerleader.
Although today the stigma of lifting passages
First guess: 19th century name for "elevator"
Second guess: stirring paragraphs
Third guess after reading headline: plagiarism
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Even worse, I hear some if not all of the founding fathers supported their local Chick-Fil-A!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Oh, if Great Britain wants it back, no problem! Have your royal family dip into petty cash, sell some extra crown jewels that are just lying around collecting dust, and buy America back from us. Er, there's a bit of a national debt problem you'ld have to take on, the Chinese would want repayment, hmm.... All totaled, we can let you buy back the U.S.A. for...., one hundred google billion dollars! Sounds like a lot, but remember, you do get ALL of the Kardashian women thrown into the deal. .
Newspapers of the time could have obtained the same results without any plagiarism ...
Absolutely correct.
... (e.g. by hiring field correspondents).
No. They simply needed to cite the original author.
The alleged cause-effect relationship exists only in the author's obviously underpowered mind.
Certainly the relationship only exists in the author's mind and not in reality. The personal attack diminishes your argument.
There's a lot to be said here about the ends you're trying to achieve. Getting the news of the Boston Massacre out was more important than who makes the money selling the paper. There's also the consideration that republication happened in markets that weren't competing with the original source newspaper. In a time when horse and buggy was the primary mode of transportation, newspapers in other cities reprinting the stories was just how the story was distributed. There was no way to reach everyone, and telling how atrocious the British were being was everyone's goal.
Citing the original author would not slow the news, cause papers not to sell, etc. Plagiarism contributed nothing.
Like with the Gannett chain of local newspapers?
So in other words, not too different from the modern "wire reports" by AP or Reuters.
...the revolution will be plagiarized?
And it is most likely true that to some extent the notion of authorship with regards to news was much more fungible in the 18th century America than it was today.
It is also true that development of practices and technologies recognizeable as print syndication didn't really develop until th e19th century.
But it is also true that various publishers and authors did get their panties in a twist when their competitors stole their output word for word. Were this not the case, the US Constitution would not have explicitly given Congress the right to set terms for patents and copyrights.
Moreover, the English word plagiarism repleat with most of its current connotations dates back at least to the 17th century. And it's based on Latin that seems to have been coined in the 1st century. It is not a new idea. It's rigorous application to journalism and academia may be new but all you have to do is read letters from various newspaper publishers from the Revolutionary era to see that those being plagiarized did not feel as warm as fuzzy about the practice as those doing the plagiarizing.
The summary hints at no case being made for plagarism helping to win the revolution, or to help spread revolutionary ideas. Is there any reason to expect a different readership or reader interpretation if proper attribution had been given?
Title should read "Plagarism was the norm during american revolutionary times". That it helped the war or swayed any opinions is bunk.
Plagiarism is claiming you wrote something that you didn't. Copying something without permission isn't plagiarism unless you are claiming that the copied material is written by you; someone who torrents the Avengers film isn't considered to be committing plagiarism, even by the MPAA. If you copy an account of the Boston Tea Party written by an eyewitness, but you don't claim to be that eyewitness, you're not committing plagiarism at all.
but I'll sue you if you steal from me.
And many of those things were wrong, many of those values were deeply flawed.
It is perfectly acceptable to judge previous societies by our values and expanded understanding (scientific, moral, etc.)
They were flawed, they made mistakes, we can say that and we can use that understanding so as not to deify them, not repeat or continue their mistakes, and avoid making errors in judgement based on the deeply flawed idea that they were moral or intellectual giants for all the ages. They were not and demonstrably so by the evidence of their lives, behaviors, writing, etc.
In fact that is what the most intelligent and moral among them would advocate.
No Kings (anoited of God.) No Gods in government.
RE: "Again, calling something bullshit does not make it so, no matter how loudly you say it."
Pot, meet kettle. Look in the mirror bright-eyes.
Oh, and by the way you arrogant patrician twit:
"Thomas Jefferson was an ardent advocate of public education as a cornerstone of a free republican society."
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffrep.html
Plagiarism is in full use today; just look at these authors...err, I mean plagiarists?
Jorgo Chatzimarkakis
Fareed Zakaria
Jayson Blair
Victor Ponta
Zachery Kouwe
Maureen Dowd
that file sharing helped win the revolution?
USA is a rebel country maked by refugees from Europe. It should be divided between UK, France and Spain (maybe Holland also - New York as New Amsterdam).
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
Toady we see virtually the same news article appearing in many places - it's due to a "wire service" which provides stories. Isn't this just the earlier version? :)