Comment Re:Is plagiarism ethical? (Score 3, Informative) 115
When I wrote "Secrets of Network Cartography: A Comprehensive Guide to Nmap" two years ago, I made the entire 180 page ebook available online. It's free to read, and it's licensed under Creative Commons. You can copy the entire thing and give it away to anyone for non-commercial use; you just have to provide proper attribution. Like my name. Or my web site. Anything. Work with me, here.
Fyodor has led a great development effort over the last ten years, and part of Nmap's appeal is how such a free and "simple" program can be used to perform powerful port scans, operating system identifications, and application version detections. What started as a simple 10 page tutorial has now grown into multiple ebook editions, free online Nmap webinars, and a for-sale video training series on using Nmap to secure your network.
I'm not surprised that the content and flow of my book was copied, but I'm very disappointed that it was apparently rewritten to hide the copying so that it can allegedly be passed off as original material. The "repurposing" of one of my charts is just one example of the similarities in the flow and tone of my original text. The inclusion of this slighly-used article on an "Ethical Hacker" site has caused my irony meter to melt beyond repair.
To be fair, not all of Kirby "Kev" Tucker's article is "borrowed" from my book; there's at least two paragraphs near the end that aren't associated with any of my original work. I'm not sure where those came from. :)
James "Professor" Messer
Author, Secrets of Network Cartography: A Comprehensive Guide to Nmap
Fyodor has led a great development effort over the last ten years, and part of Nmap's appeal is how such a free and "simple" program can be used to perform powerful port scans, operating system identifications, and application version detections. What started as a simple 10 page tutorial has now grown into multiple ebook editions, free online Nmap webinars, and a for-sale video training series on using Nmap to secure your network.
I'm not surprised that the content and flow of my book was copied, but I'm very disappointed that it was apparently rewritten to hide the copying so that it can allegedly be passed off as original material. The "repurposing" of one of my charts is just one example of the similarities in the flow and tone of my original text. The inclusion of this slighly-used article on an "Ethical Hacker" site has caused my irony meter to melt beyond repair.
To be fair, not all of Kirby "Kev" Tucker's article is "borrowed" from my book; there's at least two paragraphs near the end that aren't associated with any of my original work. I'm not sure where those came from.
James "Professor" Messer
Author, Secrets of Network Cartography: A Comprehensive Guide to Nmap
