Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings.

However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the structure and the way those facts were originally expressed. The original TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy of the original paragraphs.

What bothers me more, though, is that seemingly a CEO of a media organization has failed to do any damage control based around a genuine grievance (that wasn't even aggressively delivered). Saying things like "think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this", "needless to say, we'll be staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future for fear of ridiculous reaction" and using "u do realise that about 50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications right?" as a sort of defence is a horrible PR line for a proprietor to play, even if that's his honest opinion.

Yeah for me the CEO's response is the absolute worst part about this... very aggressive and defensive, he could have just said sorry we should have asked. And they definitely should have - I'm sure the author wouldn't have said no.

In fact, he said on twitter: " I don’t have any problem with you sharing my post. By all means! But the last two paragraphs were barely rewritten." (https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status/202089166975148033)

Exactly.

Sadly now, we should expect the classic "Oh crap, this story hit the top of HN, so here's a half-assed reactionary apology to try to save face" tactic that we've all seen before, which is incredibly lame.

Had he not been, for lack of a better term, such a defensive prick initially, and more upfront (or at least professional, you're the CEO for crying out loud) that would have been much better.

Plagiarism is not about copyright, it is about citing properly. A direct quote has to be indicated as such, a paraphrasing has to include a reference.

I learned this in my freshman year in college, this is so basic that an "editor" cannot claim ignorance of these rules.

Fundamentally, plagiarism is about passing someone else's work off as your own. Note that this is possible even if you cite that work.

I love Zee comment when he tries to teach him that 50% of web is a rewrite. What an asshole!

Wonder if an average theft or rapist should be walking around with recent statistics of population being behind bars and why it should be ok to steal or rape.

while he may be being an asshole, your comparison is ridiculous.

For those who are confused about what plagiarism looks like, here's an example from 1918:

Plagiarism In 1918 http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/plagiarism-in-1918...

Looks awfully similar to Plagiarism in 2012.

I agree with your 1st sentence, but not your 2nd. Citation is the act of declaring a source.

http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/citing/whatandwhy.html

(To be honest, I got this link from wikipedia :)

That's my entire point: declaring a source does not save you from plagiarizing. It is still possible to give the reader the impression that something is your work even though it is not, yet still citing a source. I think that the revised post on TNW is just that.

Yeah, I didn't want to wander into the muddy puddle of discussing plagiarism. As a moral offence it's harder to quantify and discuss than copyright infringement in a concrete way. Nothing wrong with discussing journalistic ethics, of course, I'm just not the best at it ;-)

The legal precedence is in the Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service supreme court case

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

That case is hardly applicable. It's a copyright claim on phone book entries, otherwise knows as a table of data.

You would still have to cite your sources, even if you copy the data. And any annotations are not part of the dataset. These annotations would ble equivalent to the article text, which was copied pretty much word for word.

Here in Norway they would expel you from all higher education for a minimum of 12 months for such plagiarism.

My basic question is this: may _I_ copy content from TheNextWeb without crediting it and publish it myself? After all, "50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications".

"Sourced" is what they call it now? So if I torrent a bunch of movies, at the lawsuit I can just say, "no I sourced those, 50% of all movies are scenes sourced from other movies," and it's fine, right?

I'd honestly much rather be brutally honest than go down the artificial PR route.

Brutal honesty tends to work when you are performing a critique, not when you're addressing a complaint from someone who unwillingly made your business money.

I'd honestly rather you not be a dick than use the "brutal honesty" cop-out[1]. I mean, yeah, sometimes the truth hurts. But I'm not convinced this is such a case. And the fact that you see nothing wrong would seem to reinforce that lack of conviction.

[1] Not that brutal honesty is always a cop-out, mind you.

False dilemma. The third and correct option is "don't be a dick".

Brutally honest is OK. Brutally stupid, which is what your tweets look like to me, is not OK.

I upvoted you (really) because I totally agree with you: CEOs like you should be completely, brutally honest. Especially when this reveals you to be oafish and unprincipled.

This policy is good for customers (so they can avoid your products) good for investors (so they can avoid investing in your company) and good for prospective employees (so they can not).

I think that could make a fascinating blog post and then discussion on HN. If you want to ride on the back of this one (you know how HN has flavors of the week), consider it! :-)

I up-voted the grand-parent because it is great to have the opinion of the other party involved, even thou I don't agree with it.

Apologising for plagiarism isn't artificial PR if you mean it.

All I get from this comment is that you basically don't give a shit, which also means you really should not be an editor as that role is entirely about accepting responsibility for what gets published.

Have you been taking notes from the tabloids by any chance?

If you have you had better have the bank balance to back the attitude because that is the only way they get away with this kind of shit while still remaining in business.

It appears we are following your advise. Please allow me to add my voice to the general baying - don't be a dick. Don't plagiarise the work of others.

Zee, Judith Griggs with Cooks Source was 'brutally honest' as well. You would probably do well to give her story a read:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/web-decries-infring...

It obviously has some keen similarities to your situation (particularly in the "editor's response" department).

While I'm a fan of fair use (it's what makes the world wide web go round), I'm also a fan of attribution...and more importantly, of handling PR like someone who's the public face of a company. I think the responses here on HN show that most of us think similarly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com