Bloggers are the New Plagiarism

mjeppsen writes "PlagiarismToday offers a thought-provoking article that frankly discusses concerns with plagiarism and rote content theft among bloggers. In the section entitled "Block quotes by the Dozen" the author mentions the so-called "gray area". That is PlagiarismToday's classification of the common blogger practice of re-using large blocks of text/content from the original article or source, even when the source is attributed."

Bzzzzt!

even when the source is attributed.

Its not plagiarism then is it?

Re:Bzzzzt!

Well no... If you cite the source it is not plagiarism; so much as it simple copyright infringment.

Heh.

Well, I don't forsee a rash of bloggers rushing out to crib chunks of Moby Dick. And clearly, when they correctly cite their sources, it's not plagarism.

On the other hand, with the internet cash flow model being built around page views, it is clearly dishonest for a blogger to simply copy-paste someone else's content on their own site.

Someone who is actually creating their own content would be satisfied with a hyperlink...for them to be pasting huge chunks of material, suggests to me that they have a simple (and intellectually dishonest) profit motive.

On the other hand, I do like the occasional full article text post, but I think that should only be in the comments, and only where there is a link in the top-level post, which is either restricted (i.e. WSJ, NYT, AJC, etc) or Slashdotted.

Either way I think a content provider could make a solid case for copyright infringement. If I printed my own copy of someone else's book with a citation at the beginning stating that all that follows comes from this other book, then I'm clearly ripping them off.

Re:Bzzzzt!

I think you said it best when you mentioned:

Well, yeah, it is. In this case, while the citation may be there, enough of the text is taken that there's no point in consulting the original article (so it's not like aggregators such as slashdot, which point to the article). The blogger adds no additional content, and effectively profits (whether in "community kudos" or adsense) from unauthorized reproduction of someone else's content. That's plagiarism, whether cited it or not.

You went on to note that:

Think of some of the "techno trends" blog links that make it to slashdot sometimes. Slashdot links to the blog; the blog contains pretty much the whole news item, and you're done.

Re:Bzzzzt!

That's plagiarism, whether cited it or not.

Plagiarism: [reference.com] n 1: a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own. [emph mine]

No, its not plagiarism. I'm not arguing about the ethics of what you describe. Just saying that plagiarism neccessitates passing off the work as your own. If you site a source, its no more plagiarism then copying a music CD is plagiarism.

Re:Bzzzzt!

Even if you cite a source, it can still be plagarism. You must both cite the source from which the idea comes from AND quote any words the original source used. Anything less constitutes plagarism.

For example, the wikipedia article says that "Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty; it is a matter of deceit: fooling a reader into believing that certain written material is original when it is not. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense when the goal is to obtain some sort of personal academic credit or personal recognition.

Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagarism)

That is the correct way to properly cite the article, so as to not avoid plagarism.

This is wrong, because I don't cite the article OR use quotes:

Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty; it is a matter of deceit: fooling a reader into believing that certain written material is original when it is not. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense when the goal is to obtain some sort of personal academic credit or personal recognition.

Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law.

This is wrong, because I don't cite the article:

"Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty; it is a matter of deceit: fooling a reader into believing that certain written material is original when it is not. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense when the goal is to obtain some sort of personal academic credit or personal recognition.

Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law."

This is wrong because, EVEN THOUGH I'm citing the article, I'm still stealing their words. If they're using a specific wording and I use it, even if I cite the article, I MUST use quotes. Thus, the following is incorrect:

According to Wikipedia, plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty; it is a matter of deceit: fooling a reader into believing that certain written material is original when it is not. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense when the goal is to obtain some sort of personal academic credit or personal recognition.

Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagarism)

Note, however, that if I don't use their words, only a citation is necessary:

According to wikipedia, plagarism is a grave issue of cheating and using someone else's words as your own without giving them credit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagarism)

I see the third type of plagarism (No quotes, direct word lift, and citation) on Slashdot ALL THE TIME. Whenever a submitter copies part of the article verbatim without quoting it, that's plagarism.

Re:Bzzzzt!

Good point, since if we went by the legal definition [google.com] there would be no such thing as plagiarism.

*Maybe* copyright violation, but not plagiarism

Parent is correct - plagiarism is claiming as your original work, someone else's work. If you attribute the work, it is clearly not plagiarism, and not a 'gray area'. The only 'gray area', I would say, would be copyright violation. It is fair use to quote someone else. But, at what point of copying large blocks of someone else's copyrighted material do you cross the line from fair use to copyright infringement?

Personally, I would err on the side of fair use - particularly if the bloggers are adding significant amounts of criticism/commentary (for example, Groklaw recently commented on the blog of some ZDNet analyst, and PJ included almost the entire text of the blog entry - but that is because she was doing a point by point rebuttal of his tripe - that should be considered fair use, because it's almost impossible to rebut in entirety, if you cannot quote in entirety). If they copy 5 pages of article text and add a 3 line summary/critique at the top, that, to me, would not be fair use.

You know

I've seen the results of this study before somewhere...

Plagiarism mey be necessary

I hope somebody has quickly plagiarised their article because their server appears to be already slashdotted.

yes, the internet makes this easy

I agree, it is easy to copy and paste, and with the proliferation of blogs, on-line stories, etc., realizing and detecting inversely proportionately becomes harder.

What makes this issue so difficult to address, and so difficult to write about, is that it's not so much about gray blogs, but rather, various shades of grey blogs. The difference between someone simply quoting blogs and someone trying to tweak the system is not a clear cut matter, but a separation of degrees.

Quoting, even liberal quoting, is expected by blogs. It's a part of researching a story and covering ongoing stories as well as sharing information. If done properly, it can not only be used to create a new work, but also drive valuable traffic to the original site. In the blogging world, being the source is often a badge of honor.

You can say that again...

PlagiarismToday offers a thought-provoking article that frankly discusses concerns with plagiarism and rote content theft among bloggers. In the section entitled "Block quotes by the Dozen" the author mentions the so-called "gray area". That is PlagiarismToday's classification of the common blogger practice of re-using large blocks of text/content from the original article or source, even when the source is attributed." I agree completely.

Here's the article text...

Not that it's Slashdotted or anything, I just thought it'd be funny.

---

The Investor Relations Web Report calls it "the new plagiarism". Dan Zarella from Puritan City call those who engage in it "the best plagiarists". Others simply call them bloggers or, as Zarella also put it, "Human Aggregators".

They're a new breed of content users that walk a gray area between that which is clearly fair use and what is obviously content theft. Their blogs are marked with large swaths of block quotes and heavy content reuse, but also proper attribution and at least some original content.

These sites, as they've grown in number, have created a great deal of controversy among bloggers who are left to wonder if they are nothing more than content thieves in disguise.

Block quotes by the Dozen

These sites, which for this article I'll simply call "gray", are generally identified by a large number of very short posts, with much of it in block quotes or otherwise directly lifted content. Though they meticulously credit their sources, bowing to more traditional rules for blog attribution, and work to add at least some original content, usually over half of their material comes from other sources.

This has caused many bloggers to worry that these grey blogs might be trying to get away with content theft under the guise of legitimate attribution. The idea being that they can create a much larger volume of content if they only have to write a small portion of it. Users will simply visit the gray blogs since they are able to provide so much more information and, due to the use of liberal quoting, the user will then have no reason to visit the original source. After all, they already have most of the critical information.

While certainly grey blogs don't pose the same threat or raise the same concerns as spam blogs and other content scrapers, the cause for concern is clear. Even though blogging is about sharing and reusing information, excessive sharing threatens the authors penning the original content. The tale of the goose laying the golden egg springs to mind as, quite simply, greed can be the blogging world's biggest enemy.

A Separation of Degrees

What makes this issue so difficult to address, and so difficult to write about, is that it's not so much about gray blogs, but rather, various shades of grey blogs. The difference between someone simply quoting blogs and someone trying to tweak the system is not a clear cut matter, but a separation of degrees.

Quoting, even liberal quoting, is expected by blogs. It's a part of researching a story and covering ongoing stories as well as sharing information. If done properly, it can not only be used to create a new work, but also drive valuable traffic to the original site. In the blogging world, being the source is often a badge of honor.

However, basing your entire site, or even a larger percentage of it, on quoted content is viewed differently. Being a source in a larger article is one thing, but having your content be the majority of the article on another site another. What distinguishes one from the other is unclear at best. There are no math formulas or systems for determining what is right or what is too much.

More confusing still, everyone has a different idea of what constitutes content theft. With Creative Commons Licenses being very common, it's obvious some feel that copying an entire work is acceptable so long as attribution is affixed. Others would place the boundary well within what is usually considered fair use.

The challenge becomes to strike a balance and set some kind of guideline that is compatible with copyright law, acceptable under the current code of blogging ethics but also able to appease the concerns many bloggers share over grey sites.

A Proposed Solution

When I first looked at the problem, I was tempted to set guidelines by which a blogger should not get more than X percent of their overall content from other sites or use more than Y lines from another entry.

The new "Reader's Digest"?

Nobody can read the whole internet. Nobody. So what people do is they rely on others to pick the interesting pieces worth reading and go from there.

But there are 2 ways to do it: Summing up the content and providing a link, or ripping a few lines out of context and then mentioning in the fine print where they're from.

While the first is something I do agree with, the second stinks of "I don't have content but I want visitors, but if I hand out my sources my visitors might go there instead of to me."

So while I'm all for gathering info and making it available to your readers, I'm also very much against the "Readers Digest" approach: Snipping out what I deem valuable, copying it to my page and giving half-hearted credit to the real author. Linking is cool. Copy-paste-blogging is just lame.

And I'd really wish this message could be sent to those who do it just that way.

Re:The new "Reader's Digest"?

"But there are 2 ways to do it: Summing up the content and providing a link, or ripping a few lines out of context and then mentioning in the fine print where they're from. ...

So while I'm all for gathering info and making it available to your readers, I'm also very much against the "Readers Digest" approach: Snipping out what I deem valuable, copying it to my page and giving half-hearted credit to the real author. Linking is cool. Copy-paste-blogging is just lame."

Yes, some bloggers do the equivalent of e-mail threads where they copy an entire piece, blockquote it and then add one or two sentences additionally. That's stupid.

But there are reasons to quote extensively from materials provided you're offering extensive commentary in return (and giving the proper credit up front to the author you're quoting from).

1. Summing up the content is not always that easy to do. I've seen plenty of mainstream media reports where the two paragraph summary completely misrepresents what was actually said. Where possible, I try to quote as extensively as possible precisely to avoid the appearance of mischaracterizing someone's argument.

2. Linking is great but my experience in about 10 years of writing for my own web site is that about 80% of the things you link to will be 404 within two years. Not to mention sites like the BBC's where if you go back to a story a couple years later it will likely have been completely rewritten without any sort of notice that changes were made post-publication to the text.

How ironic

How ironic this should be on slashdot, given that slashdot story submitters have a nasty habit of simply quoting an entire block of text for the article summary.

For example:

• the story directly below this one on Python programming
• The story about nuclear reactors
• The story about Wired Magazine's release of AT&T stuff

Sometimes the block of text is preceeded by "from the article:", but half the time, it is presented as comments from the story submitter, and the Story Approvers (I refuse to call them editors) do absolutely squat to correct it.

Quoting is good!

Given the volatile nature of the web today, there's an excellent chance that the page you link to today will be gone 6 months from now. If you want your post to have any value in the future, it needs to be more than just "Hey, look here [example.com]!" (Although except in the case of the shortest source articles, copy+pasting the entire page is bad form.)

Of course, for your post to have any value today, just quoting isn't enough. At that point, it may as well be a link. You have to provide some commentary, maybe your opinion, maybe additional information, or maybe you're just using the quote as a springboard to go off on your own topic.

It comes down to a balance: are the quotes there to support and/or provide context for your own words? Are they there as a summary so that someone wandering by a year from now knows what people are talking about? Or is it little more than an unauthorized mirror?

The fix is silly

I thought the proposed "solution" in the article was just stupid. The idea that somehow the law should police millions of blogs by applying some kind of complex formula to determine if they are in the wrong is just not feasable. Even if blogs are the worst source of plagerism there is really nothing that can be done about it, except raise public awareness.

Bzzzzt!

even when the source is attributed.

Its not plagiarism then is it?

- Whiney Mac Fanboy

(If you get the joke, you'll mod this up)

Less corruption

Remember the game where a bunch of people would gather in a circle and then one person would whisper a phrase in the ear of the person next them, and then they'd repeat the phrase to then next person until it got all the way around the circle -- but, more often than not, completely changed from the original?

Especially if the source is attributed, I have no problem with block quoting the predecessor source.

I _request_ to be plagiarized

I'm an anti-copyright advocate who sees more power in releasing my information for free to the ether of the Internet. Not only do I not copyright my blog posts, e-books and music, I openly request others to copy it and even put their own name on it. I've realized that once I put something into easily copied form, it will be copied. It might be partially used, fully mimiced, or completely turned upside down, yet I've also found that the more I am copied, the more people tend to find out that I am the original author.

For me as a writer, I love to know that people are reading me and replying to me -- that is my "profit" in the short term -- reader input. I tend to make up my own words that I write with, in order to see who might be copying me fully. I then look at what people say about their "writings", too. One such word I created was unanimocracy, but I've invented a few other phrases that are easily searched, too.

I believe the best way to "fix" plagiarism isn't to make it more illegal or immoral, but to work on a free market and open system where content creators can submit their creations to be cataloged as "the first." Let others copy it, but Google or another toolbar can easily flag a new creation as "very similar to another." Imagine if the Google toolbar had a "% of originality" for every site you visit (or every paragraph to highlight with your mouse). This could work for lyrics, guitar tabs, writings, opinion, news articles, etc.

Plagiarism is "OK" is some circles -- do a Google News search and see how many big named media outlets just regurgitate each others' news. Boring. Bloggers do the same thing, but many put a unique spin on the original writer's ideas.

I love when people plagiarize me. In the long run it builds my credibility even if they don't reference me as the original writer. I'd rather find free market solutions (such as the one I outlined above) rather than find penalties for the copying. If someone discovers that the person they respect didn't write the content on their own, the market fixes this by making the reader not read the plagiariser anymore. Easy solution.

In the long run, trying to protect your creative works will be a losing process. I use my previous creations to gain new customers who appreciate the information that I don't share. That is the product/service I sell, and I use my years of writing to show a history of original opinion and beliefs. Anything I write for public consumption is merely a marketing tool to get people to hire me for real face-time -- I could care less if someone else found a better way to make money with my thoughts. Most of my thoughts are based on a lifetime of reading and thinking about what others say.

My blog network forum is based completely on the comments of others -- I even pay my readers who give me the best comments. Their input on my writings is what gives me MORE information to sell at a higher price to those willing to pay for my knowledge. Why should I stop others from using my works to create new opinions that I can learn from?

My Own Personal Thoughts On The Subject...

I'm an anti-copyright advocate who sees more power in releasing my information for free to the ether of the Internet. Not only do I not copyright my blog posts, e-books and music, I openly request others to copy it and even put their own name on it. I've realized that once I put something into easily copied form, it will be copied. It might be partially used, fully mimiced, or completely turned upside down, yet I've also found that the more I am copied, the more people tend to find out that I am the original author. For me as a writer, I love to know that people are reading me and replying to me -- that is my "profit" in the short term -- reader input. I tend to make up my own words that I write with, in order to see who might be copying me fully. I then look at what people say about their "writings", too. One such word I created was unanimocracy, but I've invented a few other phrases that are easily searched, too. I believe the best way to "fix" plagiarism isn't to make it more illegal or immoral, but to work on a free market and open system where content creators can submit their creations to be cataloged as "the first." Let others copy it, but Google or another toolbar can easily flag a new creation as "very similar to another." Imagine if the Google toolbar had a "% of originality" for every site you visit (or every paragraph to highlight with your mouse). This could work for lyrics, guitar tabs, writings, opinion, news articles, etc. Plagiarism is "OK" is some circles -- do a Google News search and see how many big named media outlets just regurgitate each others' news. Boring. Bloggers do the same thing, but many put a unique spin on the original writer's ideas. I love when people plagiarize me. In the long run it builds my credibility even if they don't reference me as the original writer. I'd rather find free market solutions (such as the one I outlined above) rather than find penalties for the copying. If someone discovers that the person they respect didn't write the content on their own, the market fixes this by making the reader not read the plagiariser anymore. Easy solution. In the long run, trying to protect your creative works will be a losing process. I use my previous creations to gain new customers who appreciate the information that I don't share. That is the product/service I sell, and I use my years of writing to show a history of original opinion and beliefs. Anything I write for public consumption is merely a marketing tool to get people to hire me for real face-time -- I could care less if someone else found a better way to make money with my thoughts. Most of my thoughts are based on a lifetime of reading and thinking about what others say. My blog network forum is based completely on the comments of others -- I even pay my readers who give me the best comments. Their input on my writings is what gives me MORE information to sell at a higher price to those willing to pay for my knowledge. Why should I stop others from using my works to create new opinions that I can learn from?

Competition?

From TFA: "The idea being that they can create a much larger volume of content if they only have to write a small portion of it. Users will simply visit the gray blogs since they are able to provide so much more information and, due to the use of liberal quoting, the user will then have no reason to visit the original source. After all, they already have most of the critical information." (wait, was that okay?)

First off, if they're attributing their source, it is not plagarism.

It seems like the media might get pissed off that bloggers will extract the most important information from articles and post that with some (maybe-not-so-) insightful commentary, rendering the rest of their article impotent. For instance, when I read the newspaper in the morning, I've noticed that I can get most of the details I want without ever having to turn the newspaper page--it's always in front (and they designed it this way). Sure, occasionally there are some details I want further in the article, and if it's a good article on a good subject, I'll keep reading. Anyway, in a sense, these bloggers are becoming competition for journalists using the journalist's material. I feel that if this is the case, journalists need to improve so that most or all of their articles are relevant instead of puffing up their word count.

But, I personally don't see bloggers as competition, even if journalists do. In general, journalists provide fact, and the blogger provides opinion based around the fact. Sure, there are many OpEd pieces in newspapers, but the blogger is merely presenting their point of view on the original text (even if they can't assemble enough coherent thought to "outquote" the original article).

Re:RepublicanBlogs

It works for both sides.

I hate Democrat hate blogs that are out there and focus on half of one side of a story to make it look as bad as possible for anyone other than themselves.

The worst part, is that they link to themselves over and over and over and over and over and over worse than a hick family tree were all the grandmas grandpas, children and grand children descended fromt he same 2 people.

Take a recent look on google for "stop iraq war" and you will see hundreds of Democrat blogs on the subject, all citing other Democrat blogs as the definitive and truthful source, when in the end the story was put up as a sensational tabloid article with no truth behind it at all.

Bloggers are not the new news media, they are just a bunch of people who have found out a place were people will read their opinions, nod their heads, and help them mentally wack themselves off at how awsome they are and how many people they can get to agree.

Plagarism isnt even the half of it, these people cite sources that cite sources to the point were it would be difficult to find out were the original story came from, its like a horrible game of telephone gone awry, or the before mentioned incestuous family forgetting whose kid little jenny is.

It is all apart of the demagoguery used by both sides.

Blogs

This is how my usual Google trail goes, using a research session for my university course as an example.

First site:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/05/19/cuba_switchin g_to_gn.html [boingboing.net]

Cuba switching to GNU/Linux
Cuba is switching away from Windows to GNU/Linux. I have to say that I was a little surprised when I was last in Cuba and saw many of the PCs running Windows.

Cuba's director of information technology, Roberto del Puerto, says that Cuba already has approximately 1500 computers running on Linux, and is working towards replacing Windows on all state owned computers.

Link [slashdot.org]

Which leads me to: http://linux.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]

Tony Montana writes "According to several [yahoo.com] news [cio-today.com] sites [theinquirer.net] the government of Cuba is dumping Windows in favour of Linux. Cuba's director of information technology, Roberto del Puerto, says that Cuba already has approximately 1500 computers running on Linux, and is working towards replacing Windows on all state owned computers."

And the only link out of those that's still up is http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23300 [theinquirer.net], which contains only:

ONE OF the last bastions of revolutionary socialism, Cuba is to switch all its computers over to Linux to counter the influence of the Evil Capitalistic American lackey Microsoft.

According to the government daily, Juventud Rebelde, Roberto del Puerto, director of the state office of information technology, said his office was working on a legal framework that would allow the replacement of Windows through-out Cuba. Cuba already has 1,500 computers using Linux. Although what flavour is not clear.

More here [yahoo.com].

So all this plagiarised summarisation bullshit leads me only to http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050517/tc_afp/cubaco mputersitlinux [yahoo.com]

Sorry, the page you requested was not found.

And before I know it, 15 minutes are gone and all I've learned is that 1500 computers have been switched. Thank you plagiarism. And the beatiful irony of it all is that I'm contributing to it with this post!

Plagarism? New Viswanathan Book

"How Opal Mehta Plagarised, Got Busted, and Got Kicked out of Harvard"

Self Plagiarism

You can even steal from yourself, although it is more like unethical publication.

http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/Self%2 0plagiarism.html [stjohns.edu]

Even if you are the author, you may not own the copyright. This is true for journals and major publishers, so you are not supposed to recycle text.

Big bloggers are mostly aggregators

Usually the bigger the blogger is, the less original content they produce. The same is also true for many of them on the lower ends. It's absurd to see the popularity of a lot of these bloggers who, in the words of Pajamas Media, "take on a subject" by quoting a lot of someone else's text and adding a little bit of extra stuff to it. That's called a few casual remarks, not really "taking on a subject."

Reason to quote large portions

I'm in the habit of quoting large portions of articles, or even the entire article, for a purely practical reason: the mutability of Web pages. I've lost track of how often I've made a comment about something in an article, only to have a lot of people asking what I was talking about because the article said no such thing. On looking at the article again, the passage I was referring to had either been removed or altered to say something it hadn't said originally. The only way I have to combat this is to preserve a copy of the article as I originally read it in a place not subject to editing by the article's owner.

I'd note this after-the-fact rewriting tends to be most common where the original article contained egregiously and provably incorrect statements and the authors got called on the matter and now want to never have said that (as opposed to wanting to admit they mis-stated).