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Comment by DaveChild | Hacker News Reader

Plagiarism? Really? They didn't copy the text of the article, did they? They wrote their own, based on the original source. That's hardly unusual. I'm not even sure it's unethical. At most it warrants an attribution, but this witch-hunt is way over the top.

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Copying text (or close paraphrasing) == Copyright Problem

Using someone's ideas/text/research without attribution is plagiarism.

They are two different considerations, commonly confused. You can violate copyright without plagiarising, and you can plagiarise without breaking copyright.

It's an ethical consideration, certainly, unfortunately it is so persuasive nowadays that no one does anything much but shrug and say "yep, aren't they rude"

You meant "pervasive", not "persuasive", didn't you?

Heh, yep :)

It's 5pm so not really concentrating ;)

If it were a crime to rewrite/summarize an article without attributing it, about half of TechCrunch would be illegal. Though perhaps the difference is that we expect "real" newspapers to be better.

AFAIK, no one is claiming that plagiarism is a crime. It's just unethical, and those who do it should be called out.

FWIW user 'hazors' is saying this is a case of stealing, ie claiming it to be a crime:

"Plagarism isn't just taking things word for word, if you take anyone's ideas without permission, YOU ARE STEALING."

Lack of attribution is precisely what TFA is complaining about. Plagiarism is claiming others' work as your own, not necessarily copying. So lack of attribution is really what defines it.

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