Your characterization of Engadget is completely 100% wrong. We write every single post ourselves and very rarely quote someone else. When we do, we make it very clear that it is a blockquote and not our own words.
I'd appreciate a correction.
Watchful Eye
· 3 years ago
Dan Zarella is accusing others of plagiarism? It would seem to me that he forgets his own use of large block quotes surrounded by a couple of sentences. Without the block quotes he borrows, he'd have little to work with. I see little difference between his own blog and the "human aggregators" he accuses of plagiarism. See, for example, his post on the Big Apple Circus: http://www.puritancity.com/2006-04-03/review-of... in which he admits not having seen the circus, so he just "borrows" part of the Boston Herald's review.
matthijs
· 3 years ago
It's an interesting and and difficult subject. I think you sum it up quite well, at the moment I have nothing to add to your draft.
I do have a question though: In this article you are talking about "content aggregation" as a (grey) form of plagiarism, in which the boundaries between copyright infringement and fair use are not clear.
But if these are grey areas, framing is certainly not in the grey area, isn't it? (meaning it is a form of plagiarism) What are your thoughts on framing in this matter? I know you wrote about it in september 05. Have you changed your position or ideas on that matter in any way since then? (Sorry if this is off-topic)
Dan Zarrella
· 3 years ago
Watchful Eye, two points: a) why are you hiding behind a psuedonym? b) and yes I, like most bloggers, use blockquotes, however if you look at the overall balance on puritan city, you will see that much of what I post is original and unique, I take stands on issues, I make snarky (or at least attempts at snarky wit) comments, and in general I try to add new value to everything I post. (The Circus post was merely a followup to a number of other unique posts I made, including one pretty big one) Perhaps if you stepped out from behind your veil we could compare and contrast sites, and get more specific.
JB
· 3 years ago
Matthijs: Not off topic in the least and, truthfully, a glaring omission in both my article and my guidelines. Thank you for pointing it out. To answer your question, I have not changed my view on framing.
Framing a site with the intent to implying a relationship that does not exist is never right. This is not a gray area issue but something that needs to be stopped. That goes beyond reusing a portion of a person's content to create your own post and up to taking partial credit for all of the work, including the design, images and other elements. Definitely not acceptable.
I'll have to look into adding a sentence to the guidelines to address that. Thank you for bringing it up.
Watchful Eye & Dan:
I don't judge gray sites, it's not my place, but when I linked to Dan's site I did look through it and noticed that, while he does use a fair amount of block quotes, the ratio of original content to reused content was about 50/50 over the first few pages. (Note: This is without the benefit of a word count, just an estimation).
Is this too much? I don't have an easy answer. Everyone's going to look at it differently. I tend to be a little bit copyleft and err more on the side that is in favor of attributed reuse. However, the decision should really be left to those that have had their content reused by Dan. If they approve, there is really no room for complaint.
No matter what though, his site is certainly not the worst I've seen in this regard. Others, including ones that I surveyed for this article had a 25/75 or even a 10/90 ratio. Some are so blatant as to post an entire 500 post in block quotes and at a brief "Neat huh?" at the end.
All of this raises an interesting question though, as an estimation, about how much original content should a blog have? As I said before, there can be no hard and fast rules, but a number might give us an idea of the comfort level on the Web.
Any thoughts?
matthijs
· 3 years ago
Jonathan, thanks for your answer. I asked about the framing because I recently found out one of my sites (together with many sites I know the owners of) is being "framed". I did some research and must say it's very difficult to find good information, let alone good advice (it's a difficult subject). I've been following your site for a year now, but now your advice can come in handy. Your work here is really appreciated!
Dan Zarrella
· 3 years ago
JB: I'm thinking the ratio should be in the area of better than 50%, it seems like a logical delimiter, legally I'm not sure there is much to be said about attribution and human aggregation,(pure RSS scraping with ads is a different story, i'd think).
Alex
· 3 years ago
In response to the original topic, I think this is a perfect example of the distinction between plagiarism (using someone else's ideas without proper attribution) and copyright theft (using someone else's intellectual property without permission).
We do not need to reinvent the wheel, redefine/confuse these concepts, or make new ones up. The ones we have are perfectly fine.
If someone properly quotes large amounts of content without permission, it may very well constitute copyright theft (this is up to a judge to decide), but not plagiarism.
If someone uses the smallest piece of intellectual work without properly attributing the source, this is 100% plagiarism, 100% of the time, but not necessarily copyright theft.
Simple.
JB
· 3 years ago
Alex,
I just wanted to say bravo and well put there.
matthijs
· 3 years ago
Indeed, very well said. I didn't think about the difference between the two in that way before.
Dan Zarrella
· 3 years ago
Watchful Eye made a grammatical error in his post which I've found on a local competitor's "human aggregator" site, and his indepth knowledge of old posts from my site, leave me pretty certain who he is.
Peter
· 3 years ago
This is a difficult topic. With the size of the internet, enforcement is impossible. That being said, I believe the internet is a new and different thing where maybe we have to adapt and not oppose old standards upon them. If I quote you and link back to your blog it can be a good thing. It gets you more hits, gets you ranked higher in search engine, drives more traffic to you and more traffic for you = more money for you. Now if someone prints the whole article and leaves no reason for anyone to go to the original source, there might be a problem. Let's just remember that properly credited articles are good, even if it's just one original sentence and a quote. Just so long as you're not taking most or the whole article. Sure there's a line but at this point it's a line that we can't enforce. Links and quotes are a good thing for traffic, otherwise how would any of us ended up here?
Noel Cower
· 3 years ago
This is a touchy subject and I'm glad you put it into perspective for others. If it weren't for hindsight, I honestly never would have considered that some bloggers get most of their traffic by posting the most interesting snippets of posts from other articles. Honestly, I hesitate to even say 'some' since I have not conducted any research on this and probably won't because of the sheer scale of such a project.
Anyhow, on to what I believe is one argument (logically speaking) of the article. While I think those readers who truly appreciate viewing the entirety of the source article will in fact view the source, it is likely to be the case that many readers of the quoting blogs will likely be more interested in the critical points presented by said blog. It's convenience at the cost of the source losing its traffic. However, is it fair to say that most bloggers who provide this are doing it to convenience their readers or simply to get traffic more easily? After all, an article's critical points is likely to be more interesting and keep the reader longer than if it were a smaller quote that provided only a small sample to get the reader to read not only the blogger's article but the source as well.
While posting on my blog, I've tried to keep the amount of quotes I use to an absolute minimum since I just don't want to have others' work on my blog. I think the amount of quotes I've used so far is one. I was quoting myself on another site- sad. I'm one of the bizarre people who feels that the vast majority of content on a blog or site should be produced by its owner. As far as posting loads of block quotes and then commenting with only one or two sentences, I disagree with it. Prior to this article, however, I never gave it much thought other than "doesn't this guy write anything himself?"
I feel awkward discussing this since I have little experience in the matter, but I'd rather say my piece and be criticized than not have my information right. If I've presented anything that is contrary to your view, I would appreciate you correcting me so that I can better discuss it. Also, I'm afraid I'm one of the many Slashdot viewers who saw this only now. After reading this, however, I plan to keep an eye on this site as it has presented some very interesting thoughts.
Thank you for the article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Dominic Jones
· 3 years ago
As one of the original sources of inspiration for this piece, let me clarify that I used the term "plagiarism" loosely and with a touch of irony. I was reacting to some holier-than-thou blog discussion about Raytheon CEO William Swanson's plagiarism and suggestions that he wouldn't last a year in his current job. It struck me as case of the pot calling the kettle black, especially as some of the bloggers are big block quoters themselves. I do the same thing sometimes, but try not to.
The more discussion and debate about these topics the better. Perhaps is will make me think harder next time I copy and paste if I know that my readers might think less of me. Perhaps it will cause me to think differently of the next blog I see that has a lot of block quotes.
A little awareness and peer pressure can do wonders.
jefseb
· 3 years ago
Thanks for the article. Online content creative misrepresentation is rampant and I'm glad someone is fighting the good fight.
Sumant
· 3 years ago
I do not support large scale content copying but I feel, "human aggregators" are really not that bad because probably those guys have spent a lot of time digging through the Internet and compiling/distilling crucial information from different sources (hopefully with attribution) together. Collecting and distributing a coherent and quality set of pointers to good information in the world-"wild"-web is certainly useful. What are Slashdot posts doing afterall? People are aggregating stuff that matters! Subscribers look upon such "human aggegators" as a source of sources-of-information! Links to the original content anyways increase rank of the original site. Who knows, the meta-information added by these folks in the www might reveal itself in the form of next-generation www search technique.
Lisa Williams
· 3 years ago
Oy. I just made a long comment but it was lost when I hit submit.
Anyway: I do think there is some utility to human aggregation, not just to the blogger who does the aggregation and their readers, but also to the blogs being quoted. For instance, you were quoted by Slashdot today, and that brought you a lot of traffic, which you could capitalize on if you were interested in advertising, and helps you get your message across to a larger number of people.
The two things I think about when quoting are: 1. Have I quoted the least possible to get the point across to my readers? 2. Have I prominently displayed a link to the original item?
I think people coming from traditional media see blockquotes as laziness -- because a blockquote isn't original material. As a blogger, I interpret most blockquotes as part of a distributed conversation. Let me express that in a less abstract way: I may quote a part of this post on my blog, link to it, and provide a brief response to what you've said. We're now engaged in a distributed conversation that's spread across your site and my site. Unlike traditional media, we're not standing on our own individual islands lobbing bottles with notes into the ocean; the technology makes it possible for us to have much more interactivity.
This distributed conversation is a foundational element of blogging, and like Slashdot linking to you, it has benefits for both parties. I quote you and make a response, but also, all my readers are reading our exchange, and hopefully I've been skillful enough in pulling a quote that makes them want to visit your site. If I didn't quote some portion, it'd be like hearing only one side of a phone conversation -- confusing and irritating. So some amount of quoting helps my readers get interested in what you have to say, hopefully interested enough to visit and read the whole thing.
Many times I see just a short blockquote and a link, in which case the understood response of the blogger who's quoting is: "Interesting."
I've had a lot of opportunities to think about this because I run a local newsblog. One of the features is a live-updated page of headlines and the first 200 characters of posts from bloggers who live in my town. It's totally opt-in -- I never add anyone without their permission. This is very popular among the bloggers who are aggregated by it, because it sends a lot of traffic to their sites. For the larger community, it's useful because it's a nodal point where people can discover other local bloggers and start to have conversations with each other. The more the aggregator page has been around, the more I notice that the bloggers in it link to each other and are having distributed conversations with each other.
To me, the big problems are emerging commercial services like Feedsfarm which take fulltext posts from RSS feeds, republish them on pages with ads -- and, this is the worst part -- insert links into the content that the author didn't create, links that point to pages with ads. This is just a more ambitious splog, and an attempt to legitimize splogs.
Uriah
· 3 years ago
Uhh, windbag much?
I'd just like to point out that the interests of the original author shouldn't come into play, and especially you shouldn't be expected to ask permission to block quote a piece. Otherwise distributed conversations are chilled and noone can use a person's words against them without sounding like the liars in the mainstream media who quote tiny chunks out of context to pervert their meaning. If the original content were novel length noone would bat an eye at a three paragraph block quote. Why should this be any different.
And aside from that, this whole conversation is totally irrelevant. Copyright theft? Come on. You recognise the benefits of having a popular site quoting you increasing your own throughput, but you fail to see that there are already basic market forces in play here, in this case related to how a site becomes popular in the first place. Exactly three things are needed in a linkblog in order to become popular (outside of trollish spammers and search-engine tricksters, which is a different issue entirely): copious content, interesting and relevant links (to whatever audience is watching) and good original commentary. These three rules are pretty much inherently true of the blogosphere. Note that even fark.com has funny headlines. Without that originality, it wouldn't be so popular.
And so, the people who greviously stretch the notion of fair use reap their own rewards-- they don't have any viewers! So WHO CARES about the 'gray area'? It's a non-issue, and your attempts to force it into one do nothing but harm for the entire goddamn world. That's exactly what we need, a set of guidelines whereby people can sue BLOGGERS over quotes. Do you even think about the consequences of your ideas?
I repeat: the sites that quote appropriately drive click-throughs to the original content creator, allowing them to gain revenue however they can. The ones who do it badly are either already breaking other, more serious laws that need to be addressed in a direct fashion, or they are so inconsequential as to not make one iota of difference other than to letter-of-the-law asshat fascists and autistic people. To claim it to be poor design that drives away readers is merely stating the truth-- to push it further into the basis of an issue of copyright is both ridiculous and dangerous.
Personally, I think it's somewhat ridiculous that anyone takes credit for creative works in the first place-- such a philosophical notion of creativity certainly doesn't jive with my experiences with creating original content. It's just words. Someone coined every single one of them, along with every idea in your head. Gift from God or aggregate of prior experiences, either way it's not really yours to create, but is your responsibility to the world to distribute. Which isn't to say that people should be making money off of a piece without compensating the original artist, but aren't cutups original art, even though they're composed entirely of previous work? IP law the way it's structured today, the way you're recommending it be set up, it just doesn't fit into the world of creativity that it is supposedly designed to support. I'd wager we could come up with a different system of supporting artists and inventors, writers and musicians than the festering pool of 'I made it, it's mine'.
I can see I've entered into the world of windbag myself, but seriously, what is the point of all this? Just much ado about nothing.
Just remember, every word in the english language was invented by someone. Every cliche was written by a particular person, and every colloquialism was mentioned by a particular person for the very first time. To call this plagiarism is preposterous-- it is simply the nature of the evolution of communication. Lifting large portions of a previous work and calling it your own is plagiarism. Let's not be expanding the definitions of legal terms, shall we?
someone
· 3 years ago
should i just copy this article and paste it in my blog?
jk... kudos to you.
Roland
· 3 years ago
It’s an interesting and and difficult subject. I think your sum up is not very useful. Yes, you certainly have several interesting points. I just want to point out that their in my opinion is no "new plagiarism".
Mirko
· 3 years ago
If someone uses another one's text and gives credit to the original author, that's OK. Most scientific publications persists much much more than a half of quotations, citations and abstracts from the work of others. And as long as you say that is not your work, that is ok.
If you don't name the source, you claim that the content has been written from you - and that is plagiarism.
nortypig
· 3 years ago
My concern is that much of this plagiarism debate isn't fuelled by people who put their words up to share on the net but by "probloggers" who are really only concerned about click through traffic...
but other than that I guess all I can say is if anyone ever doesn't want to be linked to on any of my blogs please feel free to email me. I understand what you're saying about the grey blog thing and understand the types of blog you're talking about. I try to put a cite url into every blockquote nowdays and generally the fact I'm quoting someone is pretty evident the quote is a quote of them. Sometimes on my links blog I just use their site tagline or something.
I notice from a quote in a post on this site of words on my blog Pig Work you have fairly cited me but not put in the cite tag...
my point being fair use is simply about doing your best at the time to not "misrepresent" ourselves.
I'm not sure I ever do much different than you do here.
That being said yes there's big business going on in sucking up content just for advertising revenue... when I worry my nights away on that one I'll give it away and publish a book or something.
nortypig
· 3 years ago
Ha sorry not a quote by me I meant the quote on the commenter Id.Ology - which is a comment anyway... but you get what I mean I guess so you might want to scrub that line if you've got the chance lol...
anyway i think you're right that these things do need to be discussed in an open forum. unfortunately i don't think it will go very far in the long run bar raising awareness.
its like separating the email marketer from the spammer - my politicians seem to not consider their emails spam but to me they are... very grey too.
glad to see you survived the slashdotting too. Congrats.
Flajann
· 3 years ago
While Plagiarism is plainly bad, as long as there is attribution to the quoted article, that should be enough. In this ephemeral world of web content that comes and goes, many times I have seen sites disapear that I had merely direct links to. Nowadays, I will copy the entire article and include an attribution and a link to the original, just in case the original website disapears someday.
In the old days before blogging, in news groups and UseNet, it was not only customary, but typical to quote the entire content of someone else's post and add your own commmentary to it. There were no issues raised about copyright and plagiarism, or few if ever.
Today, I think it's more an issue of the blogger wanting more traffic to go to *his* site so that ads can get greater exposure. If that's the case, the blog is really being "monitized", and that's a different issue altogether.
I would say, don't place anything on the Internet if you don't want it massively copied everywhere, and around 20 years from now. We can bitch and bemoan all we want about what others should do, but the reality is that the Internet is a medium of copy and replication and archive. Don't like it? Go back to dead-tree publications and commentary.
Life Done Right
· 3 years ago
Consider this: I never would have found your website unless Slashdot had "excerpted" aka "blockquoted" some portion of the material on your website. You now have a new reader thanks to this practice.
You can lead a reader to content, but if you don't give 'em a sip to get there, they'll find sustenance elsewhere, my friend.
Isaac
· 3 years ago
This is all slashdot is: a huge collection of directly quoted blocks of text with a comment area for each. This is how a site that is relatively obscure can get attention. I would never have visited this site if not for Slashdot's item on it, though in this case the text presented in the /. item is not a direct quote from your article.
Also, your comment form is crap in Firefox.
JB
· 3 years ago
Isaac,
I have no trouble with it in Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP or Linux. Is anyone else having trouble with the comment form in Firefox?
El Plagarismo
· 3 years ago
I have block quoted this entire article on my site. LMAO :)
XMLicious
· 3 years ago
A distinction that hasn't been made above, I don't think... plagiarism is an ethical issue whereas copyright infringement is a legal issue.
Plagiarism is a form of dishonesty. Profits from clickthroughs and other material benefits, as well as other interests of the author such as community repute and status, are irrelevant to the issue of plagiarism. It's still wrong to plagiarize even if the author is unable or unwilling to profit from his or her creation (if the author is dead, for example.)
Copyright infringement is an element in the mechanism of maintenance and enforcement of the legal concept of intellectual property, which is itself an implementation of the public policy that creative people and creative legal entities like corporations must be directly materially compensated for their creations. Other civilizations might choose to compensate creative people in a different manner, or might decide that they don't need to be compensated at all, but the ethical issue of plagiarism would still exist.
Andrew Lih
· 3 years ago
Jonathan, re: your comment on my blog, point taken.
Though if you have a post called "The New Plagiarism" on a site called "PlagiarismToday" and the first graf says, "...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'..." then you can't really fault readers for thinking your angle is to at least insinuate that that plagiarism is part of the issue. But let's put that aside.
There are problems with the vague term you use: "content theft." It is not something defined legally (see the Dan Brown case in the UK) nor is it something widely used in academia (while the term plagiarism is).
Some consider "fair use" a form of "content theft" even though it is well established in the US sense. (It is less so in the Commonwealth's concept of fair dealing.) So I wonder if that is the issue you have, with content block-quoted and attributed, but somehow the copyright owner being able to exercise more restrictions over the use of their content? Is it a fundamental objection to the whole idea of fair use (or fair dealing) that you are contending?
Joseph Pietro Riolo
· 3 years ago
Plagiarism is built on the myth that the authors are the creators of new works and therefore, the expectation that their works must be treated with high reverence, for these authors are on a higher plane than other people (i.e. non-authors). This leads to the senseless rule that anyone who copies their ideas or words (or expressions) must pay the reverence to them by providing the attribution. Anyone who does not follow the rule is considered to be dishonest and therefore is guilty of breaking the rule. Thus, the concept of plagiarism is born.
In realty, all authors are derivers where their works are derived from many sources of knowledge. There is nothing new under the sun. The only difference between their works and the sources is the different combination of the pieces of knowledge, in the same way as the difference between two kids' construction of the same number of wood blocks. Because the universe can't hold all possible combinations of pieces of knowledge in the same way as it can't hold all different combinations of atoms, very large percentage of the combinations is left for people to discover (discover means to uncover something that already exists).
So, what should we do with plagiarism? Follow the steps in how to deal with it.
1. Recognize that the authors are the derivers, not the creators of the new things. If you continue to believe in the myth that the authors make something new, stop here and continue believing in this myth. Otherwise, go to the next step.
2. If copying text without attribution does not violate any law (i.e. it is public domain or uncopyrightable or it falls under fair use) or enforceable agreement (i.e. license, contract), go to the next step. Otherwise, stop here and ask the original writer for permission to copy without attribution.
3. If copying text without attribution will not result in undesirable consequence, go to the next step. Otherwise, stop here and you are forced to provide attribution when copying text. An example of this is college where you are forced to provide attribution with the penalty of being given a failing grade or expelled from the college.
4. Exercise the freedom of communication by copying text or ideas without giving attribution.
5. This step is optional. It is your decision to provide attribution. We know that we all crave attention. If providing attribution will not lead you into trouble or undesirable consequence, feel free to provide attribution. Otherwise, don't give attribution.
By following the steps, we can prevent the rule against the plagiarism from becoming the 11th commandment that would hamper the flexibility of communication as seen in the blog world.
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain
nortypig
· 3 years ago
I agree all authors are derivers as well...
Who wrote the first 10 Ways to Improve SEO for example - I've read quite a number. Did those people perhaps absorb it from the atmosphere? Yet none of them to my memory said they learned that on another blog. Its a valid example.
I have to say I would find it very hard ever to say exactly where what I've heard becomes my own opinion. Mind you I was a writer before being a blogger so am well aware of how parts of things soup away in a bubbling brew and come out as something original. Or originalish.
Yes I like Joseph's point and have made it myself to a lesser extent in the past. Quite a few articles on professional blogging sites seem to be a circuitous rehash of the same information which may have begun on Micro Persuasion or somewhere else.
Its kind of icky when you think of it? Human aggregators or programatical is probably irrelevant.
I'm for a free blogosphere where conversation and the sharing of knowledge are more important than click through revenue... on blogs at least.
Is either side of the debate right though? Mmm I probably think the truth and the path are in that grey area you mentioned.
All Comments
I'd appreciate a correction.
I do have a question though: In this article you are talking about "content aggregation" as a (grey) form of plagiarism, in which the boundaries between copyright infringement and fair use are not clear.
But if these are grey areas, framing is certainly not in the grey area, isn't it? (meaning it is a form of plagiarism) What are your thoughts on framing in this matter? I know you wrote about it in september 05. Have you changed your position or ideas on that matter in any way since then? (Sorry if this is off-topic)
a) why are you hiding behind a psuedonym?
b) and yes I, like most bloggers, use blockquotes, however if you look at the overall balance on puritan city, you will see that much of what I post is original and unique, I take stands on issues, I make snarky (or at least attempts at snarky wit) comments, and in general I try to add new value to everything I post. (The Circus post was merely a followup to a number of other unique posts I made, including one pretty big one) Perhaps if you stepped out from behind your veil we could compare and contrast sites, and get more specific.
Matthijs: Not off topic in the least and, truthfully, a glaring omission in both my article and my guidelines. Thank you for pointing it out. To answer your question, I have not changed my view on framing.
Framing a site with the intent to implying a relationship that does not exist is never right. This is not a gray area issue but something that needs to be stopped. That goes beyond reusing a portion of a person's content to create your own post and up to taking partial credit for all of the work, including the design, images and other elements. Definitely not acceptable.
I'll have to look into adding a sentence to the guidelines to address that. Thank you for bringing it up.
Watchful Eye & Dan:
I don't judge gray sites, it's not my place, but when I linked to Dan's site I did look through it and noticed that, while he does use a fair amount of block quotes, the ratio of original content to reused content was about 50/50 over the first few pages. (Note: This is without the benefit of a word count, just an estimation).
Is this too much? I don't have an easy answer. Everyone's going to look at it differently. I tend to be a little bit copyleft and err more on the side that is in favor of attributed reuse. However, the decision should really be left to those that have had their content reused by Dan. If they approve, there is really no room for complaint.
No matter what though, his site is certainly not the worst I've seen in this regard. Others, including ones that I surveyed for this article had a 25/75 or even a 10/90 ratio. Some are so blatant as to post an entire 500 post in block quotes and at a brief "Neat huh?" at the end.
All of this raises an interesting question though, as an estimation, about how much original content should a blog have? As I said before, there can be no hard and fast rules, but a number might give us an idea of the comfort level on the Web.
Any thoughts?
thanks for your answer. I asked about the framing because I recently found out one of my sites (together with many sites I know the owners of) is being "framed". I did some research and must say it's very difficult to find good information, let alone good advice (it's a difficult subject). I've been following your site for a year now, but now your advice can come in handy. Your work here is really appreciated!
We do not need to reinvent the wheel, redefine/confuse these concepts, or make new ones up. The ones we have are perfectly fine.
If someone properly quotes large amounts of content without permission, it may very well constitute copyright theft (this is up to a judge to decide), but not plagiarism.
If someone uses the smallest piece of intellectual work without properly attributing the source, this is 100% plagiarism, 100% of the time, but not necessarily copyright theft.
Simple.
I just wanted to say bravo and well put there.
If I quote you and link back to your blog it can be a good thing. It gets you more hits, gets you ranked higher in search engine, drives more traffic to you and more traffic for you = more money for you. Now if someone prints the whole article and leaves no reason for anyone to go to the original source, there might be a problem.
Let's just remember that properly credited articles are good, even if it's just one original sentence and a quote. Just so long as you're not taking most or the whole article. Sure there's a line but at this point it's a line that we can't enforce.
Links and quotes are a good thing for traffic, otherwise how would any of us ended up here?
Anyhow, on to what I believe is one argument (logically speaking) of the article. While I think those readers who truly appreciate viewing the entirety of the source article will in fact view the source, it is likely to be the case that many readers of the quoting blogs will likely be more interested in the critical points presented by said blog. It's convenience at the cost of the source losing its traffic. However, is it fair to say that most bloggers who provide this are doing it to convenience their readers or simply to get traffic more easily? After all, an article's critical points is likely to be more interesting and keep the reader longer than if it were a smaller quote that provided only a small sample to get the reader to read not only the blogger's article but the source as well.
While posting on my blog, I've tried to keep the amount of quotes I use to an absolute minimum since I just don't want to have others' work on my blog. I think the amount of quotes I've used so far is one. I was quoting myself on another site- sad. I'm one of the bizarre people who feels that the vast majority of content on a blog or site should be produced by its owner. As far as posting loads of block quotes and then commenting with only one or two sentences, I disagree with it. Prior to this article, however, I never gave it much thought other than "doesn't this guy write anything himself?"
I feel awkward discussing this since I have little experience in the matter, but I'd rather say my piece and be criticized than not have my information right. If I've presented anything that is contrary to your view, I would appreciate you correcting me so that I can better discuss it. Also, I'm afraid I'm one of the many Slashdot viewers who saw this only now. After reading this, however, I plan to keep an eye on this site as it has presented some very interesting thoughts.
Thank you for the article. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
The more discussion and debate about these topics the better. Perhaps is will make me think harder next time I copy and paste if I know that my readers might think less of me. Perhaps it will cause me to think differently of the next blog I see that has a lot of block quotes.
A little awareness and peer pressure can do wonders.
Anyway: I do think there is some utility to human aggregation, not just to the blogger who does the aggregation and their readers, but also to the blogs being quoted. For instance, you were quoted by Slashdot today, and that brought you a lot of traffic, which you could capitalize on if you were interested in advertising, and helps you get your message across to a larger number of people.
The two things I think about when quoting are:
1. Have I quoted the least possible to get the point across to my readers?
2. Have I prominently displayed a link to the original item?
I think people coming from traditional media see blockquotes as laziness -- because a blockquote isn't original material. As a blogger, I interpret most blockquotes as part of a distributed conversation. Let me express that in a less abstract way: I may quote a part of this post on my blog, link to it, and provide a brief response to what you've said. We're now engaged in a distributed conversation that's spread across your site and my site. Unlike traditional media, we're not standing on our own individual islands lobbing bottles with notes into the ocean; the technology makes it possible for us to have much more interactivity.
This distributed conversation is a foundational element of blogging, and like Slashdot linking to you, it has benefits for both parties. I quote you and make a response, but also, all my readers are reading our exchange, and hopefully I've been skillful enough in pulling a quote that makes them want to visit your site. If I didn't quote some portion, it'd be like hearing only one side of a phone conversation -- confusing and irritating. So some amount of quoting helps my readers get interested in what you have to say, hopefully interested enough to visit and read the whole thing.
Many times I see just a short blockquote and a link, in which case the understood response of the blogger who's quoting is: "Interesting."
I've had a lot of opportunities to think about this because I run a local newsblog. One of the features is a live-updated page of headlines and the first 200 characters of posts from bloggers who live in my town. It's totally opt-in -- I never add anyone without their permission. This is very popular among the bloggers who are aggregated by it, because it sends a lot of traffic to their sites. For the larger community, it's useful because it's a nodal point where people can discover other local bloggers and start to have conversations with each other. The more the aggregator page has been around, the more I notice that the bloggers in it link to each other and are having distributed conversations with each other.
To me, the big problems are emerging commercial services like Feedsfarm which take fulltext posts from RSS feeds, republish them on pages with ads -- and, this is the worst part -- insert links into the content that the author didn't create, links that point to pages with ads. This is just a more ambitious splog, and an attempt to legitimize splogs.
I'd just like to point out that the interests of the original author shouldn't come into play, and especially you shouldn't be expected to ask permission to block quote a piece. Otherwise distributed conversations are chilled and noone can use a person's words against them without sounding like the liars in the mainstream media who quote tiny chunks out of context to pervert their meaning. If the original content were novel length noone would bat an eye at a three paragraph block quote. Why should this be any different.
And aside from that, this whole conversation is totally irrelevant. Copyright theft? Come on. You recognise the benefits of having a popular site quoting you increasing your own throughput, but you fail to see that there are already basic market forces in play here, in this case related to how a site becomes popular in the first place. Exactly three things are needed in a linkblog in order to become popular (outside of trollish spammers and search-engine tricksters, which is a different issue entirely): copious content, interesting and relevant links (to whatever audience is watching) and good original commentary. These three rules are pretty much inherently true of the blogosphere. Note that even fark.com has funny headlines. Without that originality, it wouldn't be so popular.
And so, the people who greviously stretch the notion of fair use reap their own rewards-- they don't have any viewers! So WHO CARES about the 'gray area'? It's a non-issue, and your attempts to force it into one do nothing but harm for the entire goddamn world. That's exactly what we need, a set of guidelines whereby people can sue BLOGGERS over quotes. Do you even think about the consequences of your ideas?
I repeat: the sites that quote appropriately drive click-throughs to the original content creator, allowing them to gain revenue however they can. The ones who do it badly are either already breaking other, more serious laws that need to be addressed in a direct fashion, or they are so inconsequential as to not make one iota of difference other than to letter-of-the-law asshat fascists and autistic people. To claim it to be poor design that drives away readers is merely stating the truth-- to push it further into the basis of an issue of copyright is both ridiculous and dangerous.
Personally, I think it's somewhat ridiculous that anyone takes credit for creative works in the first place-- such a philosophical notion of creativity certainly doesn't jive with my experiences with creating original content. It's just words. Someone coined every single one of them, along with every idea in your head. Gift from God or aggregate of prior experiences, either way it's not really yours to create, but is your responsibility to the world to distribute. Which isn't to say that people should be making money off of a piece without compensating the original artist, but aren't cutups original art, even though they're composed entirely of previous work? IP law the way it's structured today, the way you're recommending it be set up, it just doesn't fit into the world of creativity that it is supposedly designed to support. I'd wager we could come up with a different system of supporting artists and inventors, writers and musicians than the festering pool of 'I made it, it's mine'.
I can see I've entered into the world of windbag myself, but seriously, what is the point of all this? Just much ado about nothing.
Just remember, every word in the english language was invented by someone. Every cliche was written by a particular person, and every colloquialism was mentioned by a particular person for the very first time. To call this plagiarism is preposterous-- it is simply the nature of the evolution of communication. Lifting large portions of a previous work and calling it your own is plagiarism. Let's not be expanding the definitions of legal terms, shall we?
jk... kudos to you.
Yes, you certainly have several interesting points. I just want to point out that their in my opinion is no "new plagiarism".
If you don't name the source, you claim that the content has been written from you - and that is plagiarism.
but other than that I guess all I can say is if anyone ever doesn't want to be linked to on any of my blogs please feel free to email me. I understand what you're saying about the grey blog thing and understand the types of blog you're talking about. I try to put a cite url into every blockquote nowdays and generally the fact I'm quoting someone is pretty evident the quote is a quote of them. Sometimes on my links blog I just use their site tagline or something.
I notice from a quote in a post on this site of words on my blog Pig Work you have fairly cited me but not put in the cite tag...
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/?p=97
my point being fair use is simply about doing your best at the time to not "misrepresent" ourselves.
I'm not sure I ever do much different than you do here.
That being said yes there's big business going on in sucking up content just for advertising revenue... when I worry my nights away on that one I'll give it away and publish a book or something.
anyway i think you're right that these things do need to be discussed in an open forum. unfortunately i don't think it will go very far in the long run bar raising awareness.
its like separating the email marketer from the spammer - my politicians seem to not consider their emails spam but to me they are... very grey too.
glad to see you survived the slashdotting too. Congrats.
Nowadays, I will copy the entire article and include an attribution and a link to the original, just in case the original website disapears someday.
In the old days before blogging, in news groups and UseNet, it was not only customary, but typical to quote the entire content of someone else's post and add your own commmentary to it. There were no issues raised about copyright and plagiarism, or few if ever.
Today, I think it's more an issue of the blogger wanting more traffic to go to *his* site so that ads can get greater exposure. If that's the case, the blog is really being "monitized", and that's a different issue altogether.
I would say, don't place anything on the Internet if you don't want it massively copied everywhere, and around 20 years from now. We can bitch and bemoan all we want about what others should do, but the reality is that the Internet is a medium of copy and replication and archive. Don't like it? Go back to dead-tree publications and commentary.
You can lead a reader to content, but if you don't give 'em a sip to get there, they'll find sustenance elsewhere, my friend.
Also, your comment form is crap in Firefox.
I have no trouble with it in Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP or Linux. Is anyone else having trouble with the comment form in Firefox?
Plagiarism is a form of dishonesty. Profits from clickthroughs and other material benefits, as well as other interests of the author such as community repute and status, are irrelevant to the issue of plagiarism. It's still wrong to plagiarize even if the author is unable or unwilling to profit from his or her creation (if the author is dead, for example.)
Copyright infringement is an element in the mechanism of maintenance and enforcement of the legal concept of intellectual property, which is itself an implementation of the public policy that creative people and creative legal entities like corporations must be directly materially compensated for their creations. Other civilizations might choose to compensate creative people in a different manner, or might decide that they don't need to be compensated at all, but the ethical issue of plagiarism would still exist.
Though if you have a post called "The New Plagiarism" on a site called "PlagiarismToday" and the first graf says, "...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'..." then you can't really fault readers for thinking your angle is to at least insinuate that that plagiarism is part of the issue. But let's put that aside.
There are problems with the vague term you use: "content theft." It is not something defined legally (see the Dan Brown case in the UK) nor is it something widely used in academia (while the term plagiarism is).
Some consider "fair use" a form of "content theft" even though it is well established in the US sense. (It is less so in the Commonwealth's concept of fair dealing.) So I wonder if that is the issue you have, with content block-quoted and attributed, but somehow the copyright owner being able to exercise more restrictions over the use of their content? Is it a fundamental objection to the whole idea of fair use (or fair dealing) that you are contending?
the creators of new works and therefore, the expectation
that their works must be treated with high reverence,
for these authors are on a higher plane than other
people (i.e. non-authors). This leads to the senseless
rule that anyone who copies their ideas or words (or
expressions) must pay the reverence to them by
providing the attribution. Anyone who does not follow
the rule is considered to be dishonest and therefore
is guilty of breaking the rule. Thus, the concept of
plagiarism is born.
In realty, all authors are derivers where their works
are derived from many sources of knowledge. There
is nothing new under the sun. The only difference
between their works and the sources is the different
combination of the pieces of knowledge, in the same
way as the difference between two kids' construction
of the same number of wood blocks. Because the
universe can't hold all possible combinations of pieces
of knowledge in the same way as it can't hold all
different combinations of atoms, very large percentage
of the combinations is left for people to discover
(discover means to uncover something that already
exists).
So, what should we do with plagiarism? Follow the
steps in how to deal with it.
1. Recognize that the authors are the derivers, not
the creators of the new things. If you continue to
believe in the myth that the authors make something
new, stop here and continue believing in this myth.
Otherwise, go to the next step.
2. If copying text without attribution does not
violate any law (i.e. it is public domain or
uncopyrightable or it falls under fair use) or enforceable
agreement (i.e. license, contract), go to the next step.
Otherwise, stop here and ask the original writer for
permission to copy without attribution.
3. If copying text without attribution will not result
in undesirable consequence, go to the next step. Otherwise,
stop here and you are forced to provide attribution when
copying text. An example of this is college where you are
forced to provide attribution with the penalty of being given
a failing grade or expelled from the college.
4. Exercise the freedom of communication by copying text
or ideas without giving attribution.
5. This step is optional. It is your decision to provide
attribution. We know that we all crave attention. If
providing attribution will not lead you into trouble or
undesirable consequence, feel free to provide attribution.
Otherwise, don't give attribution.
By following the steps, we can prevent the rule against
the plagiarism from becoming the 11th commandment that
would hamper the flexibility of communication as seen in
the blog world.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com
riolo@voicenet.com
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this
post in the public domain
Who wrote the first 10 Ways to Improve SEO for example - I've read quite a number. Did those people perhaps absorb it from the atmosphere? Yet none of them to my memory said they learned that on another blog. Its a valid example.
I have to say I would find it very hard ever to say exactly where what I've heard becomes my own opinion. Mind you I was a writer before being a blogger so am well aware of how parts of things soup away in a bubbling brew and come out as something original. Or originalish.
Yes I like Joseph's point and have made it myself to a lesser extent in the past. Quite a few articles on professional blogging sites seem to be a circuitous rehash of the same information which may have begun on Micro Persuasion or somewhere else.
Its kind of icky when you think of it? Human aggregators or programatical is probably irrelevant.
I'm for a free blogosphere where conversation and the sharing of knowledge are more important than click through revenue... on blogs at least.
Is either side of the debate right though? Mmm I probably think the truth and the path are in that grey area you mentioned.
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