5 ms·

Houellebecq borrows from Wikipedia, never cites

25 points by drtse4 16y ago

jcl 16y ago
I guess this is the literary equivalent of "sampling".
- kmfrk 16y ago
  More or less, although literary sampling is hardly verbatim when it happens. When we get a search engine for music, I'm sure a lot of artists will get what's coming to them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPdVVOmbz4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPdVVOmbz4. Sometimes they secure the rights, sometimes they don't.
rubyrescue 16y ago
wow i had no idea there were country-specific slates (slate.fr)... are there any others? (slate.de doesn't work, nor slate.co.uk)
- _delirium 16y ago
  Wikipedia only mentions the French version (apart from the original English version), and says it was launched about a year ago. It seems it's sort of a franchised version--- the Slate parent company only owns 15% of slate.fr.
akozak 16y ago
On the one hand I think he should respect the CC BY-SA license and attribute the source of the passages, but at the same time I wouldn't want to contribute to copyright over-protectionism by arguing that he's violating copyright law in not doing so. In the end I think people should do the moral thing and attribute their sources when they copy them wholesale (or more, when appropriate).
- gwern 16y ago
  > I wouldn't want to contribute to copyright over-protectionism by arguing that he's violating copyright law in not doing so. He is. He totally is. He is enclosing a public commons for his private gain. In fact, asking only for citation is the absolute bare minimum that human decency suggests; a reasonable reading of http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode suggests that legally his whole novel ought to be under CC-BY-SA. (Look at the linked article: http://www.slate.fr/story/26745/wikipedia-plagiat-michel-houellebecq-carte-territoire http://www.slate.fr/story/26745/wikipedia-plagiat-michel-hou... And this is only some of them.) Personally, Houellebecq forfeited all my respect when he tried to cite Borges as a predecessor in plagiarism. Borges is one of my favorite authors and I have read everything he wrote time and again; Borges was scrupulous about his citation and quoting, as one would expect from a librarian.
  - akozak 16y ago
    Well, I'm not one to jump to the infringement conclusion without thinking through the fair use question. Was what he did morally questionable? I think so. But I'm not yet sure I'd say illegal (but IANAL).
  - pigbucket 16y ago
    Unless you're doing the Hyperion/Satyr contrast thing, putting Borges and Houellebecq in the same context is always a problem, but: 1. A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors; only disposed in a new form or order. 2. The above statement is an example of plagiarism on my part, although I cannot determine exactly who I'm plagiarizing. It appears in a few places. Wikipedia stitches the sentence together with a list of examples that it takes from another source, but it doesn't give any attribution for the actual definition. 3. One of Flamarrion's points (cited in the French slate) was precisely that you cannot identify the author responsible for much of the text in Wiki. 4. Citiing wikipedia as the source of something is like citing Dasani as the source of your drinking water (which of course doesn't mean you shouldn't do it). 5. If you want another neat example look up French Wikipedia's discussion of the Hoellebecq affair, which repeats in brief, without scrupulous attribution, the basic argument of M. Glad's article, citing the latter only as the source of the last sentence of its paragraph. 6. I meant to just make the point about the Cento, but got a bit carried away, so: tl;dr: writers do this all the time and plagiarizing Wiki is like cheating on Tiger Woods.
zmmz 16y ago
I like the tone of the article, it is not judgemental and very factual keeping in sync with the subject matter (Houellebecq). Him copying wikipedia does not surprise me at the least, as the article explains it's just the way he does things - I especially like the part where he describes that he altered the original entry just a little bit to suit his own style, somewhat echoing his book The Possibility of an Island.
jemfinch 16y ago
[citation needed]
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Contrast Nick Hornby, who in his recent book Juliet, Naked actually includes a fictitious Wikipedia entry about one of the main characters.
mruniverse 16y ago
Can someone post Houellebecq's book on Wikipedia so I can see what we're talking about?

25 points by drtse4 16y ago

jcl 16y ago

I guess this is the literary equivalent of "sampling".

kmfrk 16y ago
More or less, although literary sampling is hardly verbatim when it happens. When we get a search engine for music, I'm sure a lot of artists will get what's coming to them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPdVVOmbz4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJPdVVOmbz4. Sometimes they secure the rights, sometimes they don't.

rubyrescue 16y ago

wow i had no idea there were country-specific slates (slate.fr)... are there any others? (slate.de doesn't work, nor slate.co.uk)

_delirium 16y ago
Wikipedia only mentions the French version (apart from the original English version), and says it was launched about a year ago. It seems it's sort of a franchised version--- the Slate parent company only owns 15% of slate.fr.

akozak 16y ago

On the one hand I think he should respect the CC BY-SA license and attribute the source of the passages, but at the same time I wouldn't want to contribute to copyright over-protectionism by arguing that he's violating copyright law in not doing so. In the end I think people should do the moral thing and attribute their sources when they copy them wholesale (or more, when appropriate).

gwern 16y ago
> I wouldn't want to contribute to copyright over-protectionism by arguing that he's violating copyright law in not doing so. He is. He totally is. He is enclosing a public commons for his private gain. In fact, asking only for citation is the absolute bare minimum that human decency suggests; a reasonable reading of http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode suggests that legally his whole novel ought to be under CC-BY-SA. (Look at the linked article: http://www.slate.fr/story/26745/wikipedia-plagiat-michel-houellebecq-carte-territoire http://www.slate.fr/story/26745/wikipedia-plagiat-michel-hou... And this is only some of them.) Personally, Houellebecq forfeited all my respect when he tried to cite Borges as a predecessor in plagiarism. Borges is one of my favorite authors and I have read everything he wrote time and again; Borges was scrupulous about his citation and quoting, as one would expect from a librarian.
- akozak 16y ago
  Well, I'm not one to jump to the infringement conclusion without thinking through the fair use question. Was what he did morally questionable? I think so. But I'm not yet sure I'd say illegal (but IANAL).
- pigbucket 16y ago
  Unless you're doing the Hyperion/Satyr contrast thing, putting Borges and Houellebecq in the same context is always a problem, but: 1. A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors; only disposed in a new form or order. 2. The above statement is an example of plagiarism on my part, although I cannot determine exactly who I'm plagiarizing. It appears in a few places. Wikipedia stitches the sentence together with a list of examples that it takes from another source, but it doesn't give any attribution for the actual definition. 3. One of Flamarrion's points (cited in the French slate) was precisely that you cannot identify the author responsible for much of the text in Wiki. 4. Citiing wikipedia as the source of something is like citing Dasani as the source of your drinking water (which of course doesn't mean you shouldn't do it). 5. If you want another neat example look up French Wikipedia's discussion of the Hoellebecq affair, which repeats in brief, without scrupulous attribution, the basic argument of M. Glad's article, citing the latter only as the source of the last sentence of its paragraph. 6. I meant to just make the point about the Cento, but got a bit carried away, so: tl;dr: writers do this all the time and plagiarizing Wiki is like cheating on Tiger Woods.

zmmz 16y ago

I like the tone of the article, it is not judgemental and very factual keeping in sync with the subject matter (Houellebecq). Him copying wikipedia does not surprise me at the least, as the article explains it's just the way he does things - I especially like the part where he describes that he altered the original entry just a little bit to suit his own style, somewhat echoing his book The Possibility of an Island.

jemfinch 16y ago

[citation needed]

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

Contrast Nick Hornby, who in his recent book Juliet, Naked actually includes a fictitious Wikipedia entry about one of the main characters.

mruniverse 16y ago

Can someone post Houellebecq's book on Wikipedia so I can see what we're talking about?