14 ms·

Plagiarism

1230 points by endtwist 14y ago

destraynor 14y ago
I've experienced this and I sympathise with you. I don't know the specifics of this case, so my comment from here on is about the general practise of content theft and barely-there attribution. This is unfortunately a way of life for many of the larger tech sites, and will be until they adapt or suffer their inevitable faith. For every one person who linked up my Android vs Condom post (which went hyper-viral), 10 more stole the images and put in a tiny gray on white text link somewhere at the bottom of the post. And these weren't no name sites, they were big 200K+ reader sorta sites. There are a small number of respectable people who link to a site with the genuine intention of sending traffic its way (Daringfireball would be one of them). The remainder do their absolute best to hide it, as you noted, some only do it when called out.
petercooper 14y ago
The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings. However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the structure and the way those facts were originally expressed. The original TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy of the original paragraphs. What bothers me more, though, is that seemingly a CEO of a media organization has failed to do any damage control based around a genuine grievance (that wasn't even aggressively delivered). Saying things like "think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this", "needless to say, we'll be staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future for fear of ridiculous reaction" and using "u do realise that about 50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications right?" as a sort of defence is a horrible PR line for a proprietor to play, even if that's his honest opinion.
- zeedotme 14y ago
  I'd honestly much rather be brutally honest than go down the artificial PR route.
  - exogen 14y ago
    Brutal honesty tends to work when you are performing a critique, not when you're addressing a complaint from someone who unwillingly made your business money.
  - j_baker 14y ago
    I'd honestly rather you not be a dick than use the "brutal honesty" cop-out[1]. I mean, yeah, sometimes the truth hurts. But I'm not convinced this is such a case. And the fact that you see nothing wrong would seem to reinforce that lack of conviction. [1] Not that brutal honesty is always a cop-out, mind you.
  - ellyagg 14y ago
    False dilemma. The third and correct option is "don't be a dick".
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Brutally honest is OK. Brutally stupid, which is what your tweets look like to me, is not OK.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    I upvoted you (really) because I totally agree with you: CEOs like you should be completely, brutally honest. Especially when this reveals you to be oafish and unprincipled. This policy is good for customers (so they can avoid your products) good for investors (so they can avoid investing in your company) and good for prospective employees (so they can not).
    - petercooper 14y ago
      I think that could make a fascinating blog post and then discussion on HN. If you want to ride on the back of this one (you know how HN has flavors of the week), consider it! :-)
    - aurelianito 14y ago
      I up-voted the grand-parent because it is great to have the opinion of the other party involved, even thou I don't agree with it.
- blantonl 14y ago
  The legal precedence is in the Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service supreme court case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural
  - hmottestad 14y ago
    That case is hardly applicable. It's a copyright claim on phone book entries, otherwise knows as a table of data. You would still have to cite your sources, even if you copy the data. And any annotations are not part of the dataset. These annotations would ble equivalent to the article text, which was copied pretty much word for word. Here in Norway they would expel you from all higher education for a minimum of 12 months for such plagiarism.
- jenius 14y ago
  Yeah for me the CEO's response is the absolute worst part about this... very aggressive and defensive, he could have just said sorry we should have asked. And they definitely should have - I'm sure the author wouldn't have said no. In fact, he said on twitter: " I don’t have any problem with you sharing my post. By all means! But the last two paragraphs were barely rewritten." (https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status/202089166975148033 https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status/202089166975148033)
  - kadabra9 14y ago
    Exactly. Sadly now, we should expect the classic "Oh crap, this story hit the top of HN, so here's a half-assed reactionary apology to try to save face" tactic that we've all seen before, which is incredibly lame. Had he not been, for lack of a better term, such a defensive prick initially, and more upfront (or at least professional, you're the CEO for crying out loud) that would have been much better.
- atakan_gurkan 14y ago
  Plagiarism is not about copyright, it is about citing properly. A direct quote has to be indicated as such, a paraphrasing has to include a reference. I learned this in my freshman year in college, this is so basic that an "editor" cannot claim ignorance of these rules.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Fundamentally, plagiarism is about passing someone else's work off as your own. Note that this is possible even if you cite that work.
    - joering2 14y ago
      I love Zee comment when he tries to teach him that 50% of web is a rewrite. What an asshole! Wonder if an average theft or rapist should be walking around with recent statistics of population being behind bars and why it should be ok to steal or rape.
      - ktizo 14y ago
        while he may be being an asshole, your comparison is ridiculous.
    - mikecane 14y ago
      For those who are confused about what plagiarism looks like, here's an example from 1918: Plagiarism In 1918 http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/plagiarism-in-1918/ http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/plagiarism-in-1918... Looks awfully similar to Plagiarism in 2012.
    - talaketu 14y ago
      I agree with your 1st sentence, but not your 2nd. Citation is the act of declaring a source. http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/citing/whatandwhy.html http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/citing/whatandwhy.html (To be honest, I got this link from wikipedia :)
- crumblan 14y ago
  "Sourced" is what they call it now? So if I torrent a bunch of movies, at the lawsuit I can just say, "no I sourced those, 50% of all movies are scenes sourced from other movies," and it's fine, right?
- mcherm 14y ago
  My basic question is this: may _I_ copy content from TheNextWeb without crediting it and publish it myself? After all, "50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications".
laconian 14y ago
I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.
- acoyfellow 14y ago
  It's unfortunate but true. These were my thoughts exactly. I can see the situation from both sides.
- benologist 14y ago
  They've basically turned journalism into Demand Media - churn out SEO'd, cheap, content with the added bonus of sites like HN, Reddit etc adding SEO weight when they're lucky. It's even cheaper if someone else writes that content and they just have to reword the important bits. It's sad to see HN starting to vote up AOL, Gawker etc crap, and it's sad to see other blogs adopting that model because it works so well.
Ahmes 14y ago
I'm pretty sure there is an XKCD about this. Didn't we conclude yesterday that there was a fundamental flaw in the original author's assumptions in how tips get reported and preliminary evidence suggests Taxi drivers are now making less? Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it may legitimately be cited as fact in a Wikipedia article. Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it will probably also go as an unquestioned anecdote in a thousand VC pitches.
- MSM 14y ago
  The XKCD is a little different: 1) Find (false) fact on Wikipedia. 2) Include fact in your important paper (journal, etc) 3) Fact is found on wikipedia to be false, and is removed 4) Fact is later found in your journal, and is then added to Wikipedia with a reference to your important findings. 5) Fact cannot be removed because it was been referenced from a journal
  - derleth 14y ago
    The missing step: 6) Since the fact is attributed to your journal, it is only relevant to document what your journal says. Wikipedia article gets updated to reflect the fact your journal is wrong.
jgmmo 14y ago
Sorry man, I read that article and thought it's insights were profound. I am sorry to hear that they basically just 'spun' your hard work. Doesn't seem fair that you do the hard work but they end up with the lions share of the hits... To SEO Experts: Should they have given the original author a 'canonical' link from that page? Would that have helped matters SEO wise?
- wmf 14y ago
  IMO giving SEO juice doesn't excuse plagiarism.
binarydud 14y ago
And people still wonder why publications like these aren't considered serious purveyors of content. The goal isn't to spread information and break stories, instead it's to get eyeballs and sell advertisements.
zeedotme 14y ago
Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste. We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different. I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.
- Braasch 14y ago
  The author should have put quotes around the paragraphs that were blatantly copy and only slightly tweaked to show it came directly from the piece and wasn't written by Harrison. Oh, and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.
  - zeedotme 14y ago
    that I can appreciate, but to come out and call it "plagiarism" publicly although we couldn't have done more to reference him...is absurd to me. Feels like this guy is trolling every single one of us here - myself included - to get a reaction.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      If I say, "This text is from John Doe," and then I proceed to quote John Doe to the point that the majority of my text is, in fact, John Doe's, then I have plagiarized John Doe. In other words, attribution does not save you from plagiarism.
    - Braasch 14y ago
      But that's the thing: you didn't do more, and that's the problem here. I don't see him as a troll. I see him as a guy who posted something he put a lot of effort into and ended up having his work reposted without even being justly credited. He has every right to be upset and share his story, and people deserve to know this. P.S. Just stop with the Tweets, it's embarrassing not only you, but the publication you represent.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
scott_s 14y ago
Yes, you were plagiarized. TheNextWeb was in the wrong, and they made it worse by their reaction. But I also feel that the main insights of your posts were not your own. They were that of the NY Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum. That is, I feel the main insight of your post were two things: the doubling of tips, and the attribution of this to the buttons on the credit-card machine. Your contribution was to look up a few other stats to get the $144 million figure.
- danso 14y ago
  ...and that constitutes a fair use of the NYT's reportage to draw a new insight...that's a bit of difference than plagiarism
- droithomme 14y ago
  I think you bring up a reasonable point: that the forced tipping system with no values below 20% was previously discussed in other articles such as that of Grynbaum from January 8, 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-cabs-wont-have-to-have-tvs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-ca... In fact it's not a secret at all since New Yorkers and those visiting the city are quite acquainted with the system, it's no secret, so I am not sure Mr. Grynbaum is a reasonable original source of information about the system, millions who have taken a taxi are reasonable sources. Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross hotlinked his image of the interface, dating back to February 2011: http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php Their reaction was similar to many others, that a design that forces a minimum tip of 20% is an annoying dodgy system for forcible shakedowns of hapless credit card customers, and sure to enrage many people. GoodExperience's blog's conclusion was nearly the opposite of Mr. Gross's: > The lesson: details matter. One change to one button in the interface changes the experience from delightful to annoying, leaving the rider feeling taken advantage of. The cab customers are the victims here, they are in essence a captive audience who can not seek competition since the system has been dictated system wide by the same government that profits well from the system since it prevents drivers from underreporting tips. Mr. Gross's original contribution was to point out that by looking at this from the viewpoint not of the customer, but of the business and the government, the system was a success as it has resulted in much profit for them. Mr. Gross published this yesterday, on May 13, 2012. TheNextWeb published their "article" a few hours after Gross's article reached high on Hacker News. This is likely where Harrison and Zee became aware of it as it seems they are readers of HN. Harrison's article was then published today, May 14th. None of the previous articles about the system bring up Mr. Gross's main points, that the design of the system has the advantage of increasing profits for the business. Not stated but worth discussing is that it only works because there is a captive audience with no other choices who do not discover their tipping options are so limited until they go to pay at the end of the ride. These issues would make interesting discussions for even more articles. Perhaps TNW could have even written one. Instead they copied an article, stole it, because I have personally compared the articles word by word and found that it is a LIE to say TNW published original content or that the article was truly written by Harrison. Under Fair Use I am now citing BOTH for comparison lest there be any doubt. ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY JOSHUA GROSS: > The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year. There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment. > During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%. HARRISON WEBER's ALLEGED ORIGINAL CONTENT, DEFENDED AS ORIGINAL BY ZEE KANE: > The average New York City taxi driver makes $90,747 in gross revenue per year (less some hefty operating expenses). In 2007, NYC required cab drivers to begin accepting cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment in all ~13,267 cars. > During payment, users are shown three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25% and 30%. Back when cabs were cash-only, the average tip was around a modest 10%. But since this system was introduced system, the average tipping percentage jumped to 22%. Who here will respond to this post and claim that Harrison Weber is not an unrepentant plagiarist and Zee Kane his belligerent defender? Speak now.
droithomme 14y ago
Thanks for letting us know about this. Your article was obviously original research which many "mainstream" media outlets have given up on. The article referenced was clearly copied directly from your original research and article without giving proper attribution or payment. It also misrepresented the source of the material by claiming to be written by a "Harrison Weber". In addition, the exchange shown with Zee where, caught in a lie, he threatens you by saying he will punish you by "staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future", shows that he is a disreputable person. Thank you for warning us about this site. I will stay away from TheNextWeb and anything they or their present staff are involved in in the future.
jack-r-abbit 14y ago
Before I get angry about this I feel I need more info. Neither of the screenshots go down far enough to get to the bottom. The currently available article has Joshua quoted under the image of the tip screen and also has Joshua listed as a source at the bottom. Since this "plagiarized by TNW" article only mentions them adding the "here's what Joshua found" line in the middle & Zee seems to think they were pretty clear of sources, I am curious if those other 2 attributions were there the whole time or also added after the tweet. Also, the TNW article doesn't cite the source of that screen shot of the tip screen.. but then neither does Joshua's article. Where'd that come from? Is it stock imagery for anyone to use? or did Joshua take the photo himself? Edit: oops. it appears Joshua's original article does credit the image (via subtle link "title") and links it back to the source article. However, that is a pretty subtle way to cite a source, IMO. The TNW article gives no credit for the image at all.
Mz 14y ago
Not defending this at all but I am reminded of my experience doing some freelance writing. I wrote a number of health articles. Several referenced published standard guidelines on how much exercise a person needs per week. In spite of stating the reference and altering the phrasing, I had articles come back to me for revision on the idea that I had copied and pasted some article I had never heard of which happened to also use the same source and cite the same figures. Not the same thing as what happened here but I can relate to the situation. I think it is generally getting tough to avoid, given the sheer volume of material going up on the web.
tomasien 14y ago
This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him. I know this is an insanely simple comment that will lead people to think I didn't read this conversation or really think about this topic, but I did. And it's not. The internet is ridiculous sometimes.
- dpham 14y ago
  I think most people are just angry at the CEO's reaction to the author; he definitely comes off as a petty jerk. I also think calling it plagiarism is a bit of a stretch.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him Yes, it is. What you see now is not how this started, there has been a lot of editing to change the situation to look different than it was initially.
- mistercow 14y ago
  > they cited him Only after he called them out for it. The screenshot was taken after they silently changed it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pbreit 14y ago
  If it's not plagiarism, it's close enough that a) the TNW author should write more originally and 2) the TNW editor should not be such a jerk about it.
- clarky07 14y ago
  they didn't cite him originally. that was added after the fact. read the article.
anonymouspie 14y ago
TheNextWeb is basically a content farm whose business model is to rapidly push out rewritten posts as soon as possible and as often as possible. Your story doesn't surprise me at all because I see it every single day with many other websites, both popular and not. All you have to do is look at Techmeme to see this in action, every single post is rewritten by some TNW writer, and sadly Techmeme's human curators favor TheNextWeb as a preferred source despite their post model being 100% spinning of existing content. The best case scenario - if the original creator is lucky - is a tiny link to the original source in the footer of a TNW spun article. To be fair, Huffington Post, Mashable, etc, do the same thing.
- peetahb 14y ago
  However, to HuffPo & TNW's credit, they do have original content that is mildly interesting. Mashable's original content is laughable at best.
zeedotme 14y ago
Zee from TNW again. There's been some confusion. Will post a follow up to this shortly to explain the mix up...but basically this HN commenter nails it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875
- citricsquid 14y ago
  So you (tnw) posted the article without attribution, the original author sees this, he tweets about it and asks wtf and then you (tnw) fix it and then you (personally) go on a tirade about how it's how the industry works blah blah blah conveniently ignoring that he knew it was originally not attributed and you reply as if it was, now you're admitting that you did in fact post it without attribution? All you had to do was apologise when he complained to you. You were in the wrong, whether it was an accident or not isn't the issue.
- sophacles 14y ago
  This really really reads like: "Oh uh yeah... this is what happened... we aren't just stating it's the case because it makes us look semi-ok..."
davidw 14y ago
Where are all the people defending "piracy" on this post? How much effort were a few paragraphs that got copied vs how much effort does it take to produce a movie, or a professionally recorded song?
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  Piracy is when it is the little guy stealing from the big guy... and that is ok. This is the big guy stealing from the little guy... and that is bad, mkay? lol
  - sophacles 14y ago
    No it isn't that at all: Piracy: "here is a free copy of the avengers" Plagarism: "here, I made you a movie, I call it the avengers" One about replicas, one is about credit. There is a difference. Quit being disingenuous about them being the same.
    - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
      I don't think they are the same and I don't think I claimed they were. Clearly the words have different definitions and apply to different actions. One takes the work of the creator and passes it along to others without the creator getting [paid|credit|traffic|whatever creator desires] for it. The other takes the work of the creator and passes it along as their own work without the creator getting [paid|credit|traffic|whatever creator desires] for it. I was trying (with humor) to explain why some people will defend piracy and then rail against plagiarism. They do have a common thread in kind of screwing the content creator a little... but in different ways. And often in a "Big Guy vs Little Guy" scenario, people will take the side of Little Guy... regardless of who took which action. Also... kind of funny to see the difference in the meaning of plagiarism among those outraged by this plagiarism. It seems that even among those that are angry here, there is a disagreement over whether plagiarism is or is not simply about giving credit. Some seem to think that it is an issue of credit or proper use of quotes... while others seem to think that even with proper credit given plagiarism still exists. So maybe plagiarism isn't so easy to define/avoid? Not sure.
drewblaisdell 14y ago
Update: image credit added after I posted this. Still, the image should be removed, this is copyright infringement. TheNextWeb is infamous for plagiarizing images for that section. Take this article, for example: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-technology-entrepreneurs-sean-parker/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-techno... The image at the top of the article is taken from this Dustin Curtis blog post: http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html (the filename of the image is even Screen-shot-2011-07-10-at-12.08.40-PM-520x245.png). There is no reference to Dustin Curtis's blog at all on the page, either. It is ridiculous that they find repeatedly doing this to be acceptable.
- nikcub 14y ago
  And another[1]: You should credit @dexterous for screenshot used @ http://thenextweb.com/in/2012/05/03/indian-isps-reportedly-blocking-access-to-vimeo-and-some-torrent-sites/ Citation: http://twitpic.com/9gr7y9 https://twitter.com/#!/dexterous/status/198036547830947841 [1] https://twitter.com/#!/dnene/statuses/198122429447548928 https://twitter.com/#!/dnene/statuses/198122429447548928
  - bradmccarty 14y ago
    To clarify: I credited the source where I found the article, quite clearly, in the text prior to the image. I thought (wrongly, it would seem) that Rediff News had produced the image themselves. I did not see the tweet from Dhananjay, and never got an email or anything else about it. Now that I have seen it, I have credited my source, as I always attempt to do.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Thank you for at least mentioning that you work for TNW in your profile. It makes this ... (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bradmccarty http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bradmccarty) ...less annoying. Compare that to zeedotme's ... (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zeedotme http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zeedotme) ...which just feels sleazy.
moron 14y ago
All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it. The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.
- joering2 14y ago
  well, perhaps making it a public rant like in this example will make them think twice before next copy/past.
- jinfiesto 14y ago
  I kind of disagree on this point. Business Insider has always asked for my permission before syndicating my content.
  - spicyj 14y ago
    See: http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider
- astrodust 14y ago
  There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. If that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.
  - davidw 14y ago
    > There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. Either that, or a very, very old breed.
  - csomar 14y ago
    I'm not bothered much by "ur" (since it's Twitter, and you have only 140 characters) than by his tone.
    - zedadex 14y ago
pwthornton 14y ago
You can't copyright facts, but The New Week article didn't have proper citation. In no work of academic writing or real journalism are you allowed to put one link at the bottom and call it a citation. I would never allow a post at interchangeproject.org to have that sloppy of citations, nor would I allow someone to write there very long if this is what they consider proper attribution. Is it plagiarism? I don't know about that, but the attribution in that post is appalling. The post is so close to the original that it should have just been one giant block quote. That's not journalism.
jeffpersonified 14y ago
Tech journalism is broken. Someone fix it. Please.
- slantyyz 14y ago
  Maybe we can start by not referring to a lot of tech blogs as journalism. Some are, but most aren't - including many that would like us to think they are.
  - derleth 14y ago
    Then we'd have to stop referring to a lot of what goes on TV, radio, and in the newspapers as journalism.
    - slantyyz 14y ago
      Agree with that too!
      - jeffpersonified 14y ago
        Here here.
    - djcapelis 14y ago
      We sure do. I've been moving that direction for a few years now.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
The CEO's response amounts to the assertion that they will only plagiarize from people who won't call them out. What a nasty ungrateful insulting fellow.
gojomo 14y ago
Zee/TheNextWeb has a history of copying others' work without permission, including for one period HN comments. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640492 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640492 Note that what I was concerned about was not respectful excerpting: for a time, they were scraping every HN comment related to their links back to their site, without permission/notification to authors, without threading, with NOFOLLOW.
- joering2 14y ago
  Would be great to have a kickstarter for suing dirtbags, like in this example. Classactionstarter or something...
  - officemonkey 14y ago
    douchestarter.
    - trefn 14y ago
      douchestopper?
- javajosh 14y ago
  Thanks for linking to this. Looks like there's a pattern here. Too bad for Zee.
- jacobolus 14y ago
  Why can’t PG or some hacker news admin simply block any stories from thenextweb?
benthumb 14y ago
The plagiarizer hasn't taken the care to assimilate an idea well enough so he can put it into his own words. The effort put into explaining something in one's own words has the powerful effect of spurring the imagination and intellect, which then can lead to new insights. The question is does Action Man care? Clearly not. Talk about steering clear of something -- thanks for the unintended warning.
zeedotme 14y ago
Zee again. Full response: http://bit.ly/JxoWae http://bit.ly/JxoWae
- nowarninglabel 14y ago
  "keep your mouth shut until you know all the facts" I think you learned a hard lesson here, but it's one that many of us had to learn the hard way. It's good to see an apology.
  - Juha 14y ago
    "It's good to see an apology." After reading the response I feel he was avoiding giving a proper apology. Only thing he apologizes is that he didn't have all the information at first, which is a kind of non-apology.
    - dkersten 14y ago
      Yep, sounds like the usual issue-dodging non-apology damage-control bullcrap to me.
- petercooper 14y ago
  Good lessons learned. We've all been there at some point in life (the rash response thing). TheNextWeb usually has plenty of good, timely posts and it'd be a shame to consider it sullied so I, and hopefully others, hope some good can come out of this drama long term. (I've been in the role of editor and got the blame for sloppy fact-checking by one of my charges; it definitely helped me get my eye back on the ball :-))
- Devilboy 14y ago
  So are you going to fire the offender or what exactly are you doing to prevent this happening again?
- turar 14y ago
  "Finally... Lesson learnt? Don’t respond while emotions are running high" Wow, after all the drama you still don't get it. Lesson learned should have been: do not copy/paste, especially to such a degree where a majority of your "content" is actually not yours.
pitdesi 14y ago
There needs to be some sort of standard for citing other peoples work, sort of like an updated Chicago Manual of Style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_styles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_styles) for online publications. These days we have all these content mills that put out very little original work... I don't know what the proper method should be, how much work you can take etc. Also remember this - The New York Times spent weeks writing an article about how Wal-mart and Target learn your secrets and then Forbes wrote a knock-off that stole a bunch of their traffic. http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-article-and-got-all-the-traffic-2012-02/ http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-art... This also reminds me that as much as possible we should try to link to the original source on HackerNews, it's in the guidelines! (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Back in July, I spent a lot of time putting together an infographic for FeeFighters on the tech boom and bubble (http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/tech-boom-bubble.jpg http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/tech-...). We got links back from tons of magazines, including Forbes, Mashable, Fast Company, etc. Many of them didn't link to either us or KissMetrics (our partner who did the design work), but most complied after sending an email or tweet. One place, Bostinno - refused to link to us at all, despite multiple tweets and emails to them, for some reason deciding to credit Mashable: http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-a-tech-boom-or-bubble-lets-look-at-the-data-infographic/ http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-a-tech-boom-or-bubb... Massholes.
- vsync 14y ago
  > There needs to be some sort of standard for citing other peoples work You mean like <a href>, <cite>, <blockquote cite>, ...
- benologist 14y ago
  Not at all surprised bostinno never linked you, they're literally a spam site complete with 20+ HN accounts.
- ilamont 14y ago
  Former journalist here. Some years ago I attempted to create a standard called "Source Blocks" (see http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-experiment.html http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-experiment.... ). It's basically a paragraph of explanatory text that the author places at the end of the article, identifying what sources he/she used in the course of researching the article. It looked something like this. Sources cited, referenced, or consulted: Blog.basturea.com, American Journalism Review (ajr.org), Editorsweblog.org, Glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com, Techmeme.com, thelongtail.com, Washingtonpost.com, Wired The problem was, even without linking these sources, it took discipline to keep a running list while work was being done, and/or time at the end of the writing process to do the source block writeup. And the system did not account for higher "weight" for certain sources, much less the details that came from each source. It attracted a little attention, but I was only able to keep it up for another year. At the time, someone suggested creating some sort of browser extension to track all of the sources, which might have helped a little with other websites but would have been useless for phone or F2F interviews that occupy many journalists' time.
JangoSteve 14y ago
For what it's worth, the Huffington Post once did something similar with one of my posts, though it wasn't plagiarism, they basically just took my idea and ran with it. Even then, I'd say my situation was totally fair play. And given the content, it's not entirely inconceivable that they just had the same idea. All of that said, I tweeted them about my article [1] (nothing accusative, just a sort of "hey, check out my similar article from eight months ago for a little more insight." They tweeted back something equally civil and added a link to their article [2] within a minute. Anyway, that's a great way to handle such a situation, in my opinion. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-top-results_n_709142.html#s136186&title=A_is_for http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-top-...
- sparknlaunch12 14y ago
  Great example of how the majority of news sites behave. It seems that others play by different rules. I thought the foundation of any journalism is quoting your sources and writing your own material. Maybe the web has changed (for the worst).
johnfoo 14y ago
http://drawsomethingnaughty.com/100262 http://drawsomethingnaughty.com/100262
sparknlaunch12 14y ago
Journalism ethics and standards taken from Wikipedia [1]: The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements drafted by both professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations. The primary themes common to most codes of journalistic standards and ethics are the following: -Accuracy and standards for factual reporting -Slander and libel considerations -Harm limitation principle -Presentation [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards
dyscrete 14y ago
Zee has apologized. https://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202154649183203329 https://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202154649183203329
- jsavimbi 14y ago
  CEO's these days... They have no fight in them.
- bithive123 14y ago
  A more direct link: https://docs.google.com/a/reed.edu/document/d/1M92qqFrK2zlqCoaQV_l_wuxIjDncLDD-8QMiPbRgJxU/edit https://docs.google.com/a/reed.edu/document/d/1M92qqFrK2zlqC... (the Fully Qualified Apology is at the end of the second-to-last paragraph)
- chris_wot 14y ago
  A twitter reply to someone who called him out, to a Google Docs non-apology which is behind a link shortener. Pardon me if I'm unimpressed.
laconian 14y ago
HN has the readership to effect positive change in the tech journalism arena. Can HN blacklist the most egregarious plagiarists?
dbin78 14y ago
A CEO should never respond to a situation in that way. He lost his cool; big time! I have always respected TNW, but today changes that.
dmschulman 14y ago
How is some anonymous Google Doc posted on the comments section of a Hacker News item an apology???? Make it public on front page of TNW.com
MisterMerkin 14y ago
I find it really hard to care about this. I'm amazed other people here seem to be up this in arms about it.
suborbital 14y ago
wow. and to think people make money doing this.
Xuzz 14y ago
."--'v
- pocketdial 14y ago
  bfro21jg309..............
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
leephillips 14y ago
Statutory damages for copyright infringement: minimum $750, maxiumum $150,000 per offense. Sue them. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504
mikecane 14y ago
I think there is an overarching issue here because I've experienced it myself several times. 1) Person writes about something out of passion and posts it for free (the blog carries no ads) 2) Person who gets paid to write reads it, has no record of ever writing about that topic before, and then does his/her own take -- hitting all the same key points (including using quotes from others that were in the original post) making him/her look like a thinker. 3) Original person is never cited, never acknowledged, while paid person merrily collects paycheck for "work." Having experienced it firsthand, I at least know several people never to take seriously as "thinkers" ever again.
noonespecial 14y ago
"We have a great many writers that submit articles to us. We do our best to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, but sometimes it does anyway. We'll fix it right now with credit and a link to your blog. Sorry about that, bro." See? Fixed. Easy.
seanp2k2 14y ago
Ahhh, so TNW really /is/ the next TechCrunch.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
CurtMonash 14y ago
TheNextWeb could have provided substantially the same article to its readers by block quoting with attribution rather than plagiarizing with attribution. Would that have been fair use? While a significant minority of people would say "No", I'm in the majority that would say "Yes". But hey -- I once blogged something only to have Mashable post the same news, taking credit for it as original research (but without plagiarizing the wording). I think that behavior was worse. Pete Cashmore promised me he'd fix it, then didn't follow through.
marcamillion 14y ago
Wow.....it's May 2012 and 'tech-savvy' companies still don't know how to handle basic stuff like copyright infringement by employees, bad customer service experiences and disgruntled partners (and employees) as a direct result of your own actions? Say sorry. Shut up. Avert PR crisis. Move on. Is it that hard people?
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
That's the most subtly annoying font I've seen.
saket123 14y ago
ohh my..reading Zee's tweets https://twitter.com/#!/Zee https://twitter.com/#!/Zee ..Amazing how little this guy cares about this. He basically tried to bully his way out of this before coming up with a meek apology. I will try to stay clear of TNW from now.
yycom 14y ago
It's not surprising when your articles have no byline.
- yycom 14y ago
  Which I see you've added, and very nicely too. This is how it should be done: it tells a random visitor following a random link who you are and why to trust your words. Very minor point: if it were at the top (e.g. sub-heading), we see your bona-fides before reading the article.
shanselman 14y ago
TheNextWeb did this to me a while back, if you remember the Only One Cloud meme. http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-its-not-as-unique-as-you-might-think/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-it... I went back and forth with the guy on Twitter and he was nice enough and updated it, but it's still curation, not creation. They are link blogging essentially, but with too much "copy and paraphrase."
anupj 14y ago
It makes me wonder what else have they plagiarised. Just saying.
BiWinning 14y ago
omg you got plagarized? omg on the internetz?? omg serialz??? It's the internet shit for brains. Lemme ask you: Ever downloaded a torrent? Ever hotlinked an image? The content you wrote sits on a web page, written in html and served with the http protocol. Anyone can save your webpage as file on their desktop, copy it, put it in a torrent, whatever. Getting plagiarized sucks but man up and understand the game you're playing here though you could argue that you do know the game by bitching about it on hacker news and reddit, that's a good place to bitch about such things, the girls here like to get worked about this kinda shit.
ceekays 14y ago
I have just noted that plagiarism is becoming the order of the day on the Internet.Someone has just plagiarised too a post a put on my blog last: http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-plagiarized-my-blog-post.html http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-plagiar.... SOPA was bad but I think we need something in these lines to curb plagiarism.
jeffmess 14y ago
Scumbag Zee. Steals your content, uploads a non-apology to Google Docs.
davesims 14y ago
Interesting to note that exactly a month ago today, thenextweb pointed out a far less egregious or even obvious offense: http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-its-this-weeks-media-news-in-review/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-... "And finally… Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from someone else when he was accused of plagiarism. Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him? We’ll let you decide what really happened…"
ChristianMarks 14y ago
Slate magazine picked up the story, but exercised responsible journalistic practice and credited Joshua Gross: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_tipping.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_t... And to think they did this without having to be told and without finding it necessary to insult the author--quite a contrast.

1230 points by endtwist 14y ago

I've experienced this and I sympathise with you. I don't know the specifics of this case, so my comment from here on is about the general practise of content theft and barely-there attribution. This is unfortunately a way of life for many of the larger tech sites, and will be until they adapt or suffer their inevitable faith. For every one person who linked up my Android vs Condom post (which went hyper-viral), 10 more stole the images and put in a tiny gray on white text link somewhere at the bottom of the post. And these weren't no name sites, they were big 200K+ reader sorta sites. There are a small number of respectable people who link to a site with the genuine intention of sending traffic its way (Daringfireball would be one of them). The remainder do their absolute best to hide it, as you noted, some only do it when called out.

petercooper 14y ago

The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings. However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the structure and the way those facts were originally expressed. The original TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy of the original paragraphs. What bothers me more, though, is that seemingly a CEO of a media organization has failed to do any damage control based around a genuine grievance (that wasn't even aggressively delivered). Saying things like "think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this", "needless to say, we'll be staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future for fear of ridiculous reaction" and using "u do realise that about 50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications right?" as a sort of defence is a horrible PR line for a proprietor to play, even if that's his honest opinion.

zeedotme 14y ago
I'd honestly much rather be brutally honest than go down the artificial PR route.
- exogen 14y ago
  Brutal honesty tends to work when you are performing a critique, not when you're addressing a complaint from someone who unwillingly made your business money.
- j_baker 14y ago
  I'd honestly rather you not be a dick than use the "brutal honesty" cop-out[1]. I mean, yeah, sometimes the truth hurts. But I'm not convinced this is such a case. And the fact that you see nothing wrong would seem to reinforce that lack of conviction. [1] Not that brutal honesty is always a cop-out, mind you.
- ellyagg 14y ago
  False dilemma. The third and correct option is "don't be a dick".
- mikeash 14y ago
  Brutally honest is OK. Brutally stupid, which is what your tweets look like to me, is not OK.
- javajosh 14y ago
  I upvoted you (really) because I totally agree with you: CEOs like you should be completely, brutally honest. Especially when this reveals you to be oafish and unprincipled. This policy is good for customers (so they can avoid your products) good for investors (so they can avoid investing in your company) and good for prospective employees (so they can not).
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I think that could make a fascinating blog post and then discussion on HN. If you want to ride on the back of this one (you know how HN has flavors of the week), consider it! :-)
  - aurelianito 14y ago
    I up-voted the grand-parent because it is great to have the opinion of the other party involved, even thou I don't agree with it.
blantonl 14y ago
The legal precedence is in the Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service supreme court case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural
- hmottestad 14y ago
  That case is hardly applicable. It's a copyright claim on phone book entries, otherwise knows as a table of data. You would still have to cite your sources, even if you copy the data. And any annotations are not part of the dataset. These annotations would ble equivalent to the article text, which was copied pretty much word for word. Here in Norway they would expel you from all higher education for a minimum of 12 months for such plagiarism.
jenius 14y ago
Yeah for me the CEO's response is the absolute worst part about this... very aggressive and defensive, he could have just said sorry we should have asked. And they definitely should have - I'm sure the author wouldn't have said no. In fact, he said on twitter: " I don’t have any problem with you sharing my post. By all means! But the last two paragraphs were barely rewritten." (https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status/202089166975148033 https://twitter.com/#!/endtwist/status/202089166975148033)
- kadabra9 14y ago
  Exactly. Sadly now, we should expect the classic "Oh crap, this story hit the top of HN, so here's a half-assed reactionary apology to try to save face" tactic that we've all seen before, which is incredibly lame. Had he not been, for lack of a better term, such a defensive prick initially, and more upfront (or at least professional, you're the CEO for crying out loud) that would have been much better.
atakan_gurkan 14y ago
Plagiarism is not about copyright, it is about citing properly. A direct quote has to be indicated as such, a paraphrasing has to include a reference. I learned this in my freshman year in college, this is so basic that an "editor" cannot claim ignorance of these rules.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Fundamentally, plagiarism is about passing someone else's work off as your own. Note that this is possible even if you cite that work.
  - joering2 14y ago
    I love Zee comment when he tries to teach him that 50% of web is a rewrite. What an asshole! Wonder if an average theft or rapist should be walking around with recent statistics of population being behind bars and why it should be ok to steal or rape.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      while he may be being an asshole, your comparison is ridiculous.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    For those who are confused about what plagiarism looks like, here's an example from 1918: Plagiarism In 1918 http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/plagiarism-in-1918/ http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/plagiarism-in-1918... Looks awfully similar to Plagiarism in 2012.
  - talaketu 14y ago
    I agree with your 1st sentence, but not your 2nd. Citation is the act of declaring a source. http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/citing/whatandwhy.html http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/citing/whatandwhy.html (To be honest, I got this link from wikipedia :)
crumblan 14y ago
"Sourced" is what they call it now? So if I torrent a bunch of movies, at the lawsuit I can just say, "no I sourced those, 50% of all movies are scenes sourced from other movies," and it's fine, right?
mcherm 14y ago
My basic question is this: may _I_ copy content from TheNextWeb without crediting it and publish it myself? After all, "50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications".

laconian 14y ago

I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.

acoyfellow 14y ago
It's unfortunate but true. These were my thoughts exactly. I can see the situation from both sides.
benologist 14y ago
They've basically turned journalism into Demand Media - churn out SEO'd, cheap, content with the added bonus of sites like HN, Reddit etc adding SEO weight when they're lucky. It's even cheaper if someone else writes that content and they just have to reword the important bits. It's sad to see HN starting to vote up AOL, Gawker etc crap, and it's sad to see other blogs adopting that model because it works so well.

Ahmes 14y ago

I'm pretty sure there is an XKCD about this. Didn't we conclude yesterday that there was a fundamental flaw in the original author's assumptions in how tips get reported and preliminary evidence suggests Taxi drivers are now making less? Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it may legitimately be cited as fact in a Wikipedia article. Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it will probably also go as an unquestioned anecdote in a thousand VC pitches.

MSM 14y ago
The XKCD is a little different: 1) Find (false) fact on Wikipedia. 2) Include fact in your important paper (journal, etc) 3) Fact is found on wikipedia to be false, and is removed 4) Fact is later found in your journal, and is then added to Wikipedia with a reference to your important findings. 5) Fact cannot be removed because it was been referenced from a journal
- derleth 14y ago
  The missing step: 6) Since the fact is attributed to your journal, it is only relevant to document what your journal says. Wikipedia article gets updated to reflect the fact your journal is wrong.

jgmmo 14y ago

Sorry man, I read that article and thought it's insights were profound. I am sorry to hear that they basically just 'spun' your hard work. Doesn't seem fair that you do the hard work but they end up with the lions share of the hits... To SEO Experts: Should they have given the original author a 'canonical' link from that page? Would that have helped matters SEO wise?

wmf 14y ago
IMO giving SEO juice doesn't excuse plagiarism.

binarydud 14y ago

And people still wonder why publications like these aren't considered serious purveyors of content. The goal isn't to spread information and break stories, instead it's to get eyeballs and sell advertisements.

zeedotme 14y ago

Update: see this comment on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 Zee from TNW here. Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently here. I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original source (we did that twice in the article...even with his full name (a screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided to just copy/paste. We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different. I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

Braasch 14y ago
The author should have put quotes around the paragraphs that were blatantly copy and only slightly tweaked to show it came directly from the piece and wasn't written by Harrison. Oh, and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.
- zeedotme 14y ago
  that I can appreciate, but to come out and call it "plagiarism" publicly although we couldn't have done more to reference him...is absurd to me. Feels like this guy is trolling every single one of us here - myself included - to get a reaction.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    If I say, "This text is from John Doe," and then I proceed to quote John Doe to the point that the majority of my text is, in fact, John Doe's, then I have plagiarized John Doe. In other words, attribution does not save you from plagiarism.
  - Braasch 14y ago
    But that's the thing: you didn't do more, and that's the problem here. I don't see him as a troll. I see him as a guy who posted something he put a lot of effort into and ended up having his work reposted without even being justly credited. He has every right to be upset and share his story, and people deserve to know this. P.S. Just stop with the Tweets, it's embarrassing not only you, but the publication you represent.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

scott_s 14y ago

Yes, you were plagiarized. TheNextWeb was in the wrong, and they made it worse by their reaction. But I also feel that the main insights of your posts were not your own. They were that of the NY Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum. That is, I feel the main insight of your post were two things: the doubling of tips, and the attribution of this to the buttons on the credit-card machine. Your contribution was to look up a few other stats to get the $144 million figure.

danso 14y ago
...and that constitutes a fair use of the NYT's reportage to draw a new insight...that's a bit of difference than plagiarism
droithomme 14y ago
I think you bring up a reasonable point: that the forced tipping system with no values below 20% was previously discussed in other articles such as that of Grynbaum from January 8, 2012: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-cabs-wont-have-to-have-tvs.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-ca... In fact it's not a secret at all since New Yorkers and those visiting the city are quite acquainted with the system, it's no secret, so I am not sure Mr. Grynbaum is a reasonable original source of information about the system, millions who have taken a taxi are reasonable sources. Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross hotlinked his image of the interface, dating back to February 2011: http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php Their reaction was similar to many others, that a design that forces a minimum tip of 20% is an annoying dodgy system for forcible shakedowns of hapless credit card customers, and sure to enrage many people. GoodExperience's blog's conclusion was nearly the opposite of Mr. Gross's: > The lesson: details matter. One change to one button in the interface changes the experience from delightful to annoying, leaving the rider feeling taken advantage of. The cab customers are the victims here, they are in essence a captive audience who can not seek competition since the system has been dictated system wide by the same government that profits well from the system since it prevents drivers from underreporting tips. Mr. Gross's original contribution was to point out that by looking at this from the viewpoint not of the customer, but of the business and the government, the system was a success as it has resulted in much profit for them. Mr. Gross published this yesterday, on May 13, 2012. TheNextWeb published their "article" a few hours after Gross's article reached high on Hacker News. This is likely where Harrison and Zee became aware of it as it seems they are readers of HN. Harrison's article was then published today, May 14th. None of the previous articles about the system bring up Mr. Gross's main points, that the design of the system has the advantage of increasing profits for the business. Not stated but worth discussing is that it only works because there is a captive audience with no other choices who do not discover their tipping options are so limited until they go to pay at the end of the ride. These issues would make interesting discussions for even more articles. Perhaps TNW could have even written one. Instead they copied an article, stole it, because I have personally compared the articles word by word and found that it is a LIE to say TNW published original content or that the article was truly written by Harrison. Under Fair Use I am now citing BOTH for comparison lest there be any doubt. ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY JOSHUA GROSS: > The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year. There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment. > During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%. HARRISON WEBER's ALLEGED ORIGINAL CONTENT, DEFENDED AS ORIGINAL BY ZEE KANE: > The average New York City taxi driver makes $90,747 in gross revenue per year (less some hefty operating expenses). In 2007, NYC required cab drivers to begin accepting cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment in all ~13,267 cars. > During payment, users are shown three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25% and 30%. Back when cabs were cash-only, the average tip was around a modest 10%. But since this system was introduced system, the average tipping percentage jumped to 22%. Who here will respond to this post and claim that Harrison Weber is not an unrepentant plagiarist and Zee Kane his belligerent defender? Speak now.

droithomme 14y ago

Thanks for letting us know about this. Your article was obviously original research which many "mainstream" media outlets have given up on. The article referenced was clearly copied directly from your original research and article without giving proper attribution or payment. It also misrepresented the source of the material by claiming to be written by a "Harrison Weber". In addition, the exchange shown with Zee where, caught in a lie, he threatens you by saying he will punish you by "staying well clear of anything ur involved with in future", shows that he is a disreputable person. Thank you for warning us about this site. I will stay away from TheNextWeb and anything they or their present staff are involved in in the future.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago

Before I get angry about this I feel I need more info. Neither of the screenshots go down far enough to get to the bottom. The currently available article has Joshua quoted under the image of the tip screen and also has Joshua listed as a source at the bottom. Since this "plagiarized by TNW" article only mentions them adding the "here's what Joshua found" line in the middle & Zee seems to think they were pretty clear of sources, I am curious if those other 2 attributions were there the whole time or also added after the tweet. Also, the TNW article doesn't cite the source of that screen shot of the tip screen.. but then neither does Joshua's article. Where'd that come from? Is it stock imagery for anyone to use? or did Joshua take the photo himself? Edit: oops. it appears Joshua's original article does credit the image (via subtle link "title") and links it back to the source article. However, that is a pretty subtle way to cite a source, IMO. The TNW article gives no credit for the image at all.

Mz 14y ago

Not defending this at all but I am reminded of my experience doing some freelance writing. I wrote a number of health articles. Several referenced published standard guidelines on how much exercise a person needs per week. In spite of stating the reference and altering the phrasing, I had articles come back to me for revision on the idea that I had copied and pasted some article I had never heard of which happened to also use the same source and cite the same figures. Not the same thing as what happened here but I can relate to the situation. I think it is generally getting tough to avoid, given the sheer volume of material going up on the web.

tomasien 14y ago

This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him. I know this is an insanely simple comment that will lead people to think I didn't read this conversation or really think about this topic, but I did. And it's not. The internet is ridiculous sometimes.

dpham 14y ago
I think most people are just angry at the CEO's reaction to the author; he definitely comes off as a petty jerk. I also think calling it plagiarism is a bit of a stretch.
jacquesm 14y ago
> This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him Yes, it is. What you see now is not how this started, there has been a lot of editing to change the situation to look different than it was initially.
mistercow 14y ago
> they cited him Only after he called them out for it. The screenshot was taken after they silently changed it.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pbreit 14y ago
If it's not plagiarism, it's close enough that a) the TNW author should write more originally and 2) the TNW editor should not be such a jerk about it.
clarky07 14y ago
they didn't cite him originally. that was added after the fact. read the article.

anonymouspie 14y ago

TheNextWeb is basically a content farm whose business model is to rapidly push out rewritten posts as soon as possible and as often as possible. Your story doesn't surprise me at all because I see it every single day with many other websites, both popular and not. All you have to do is look at Techmeme to see this in action, every single post is rewritten by some TNW writer, and sadly Techmeme's human curators favor TheNextWeb as a preferred source despite their post model being 100% spinning of existing content. The best case scenario - if the original creator is lucky - is a tiny link to the original source in the footer of a TNW spun article. To be fair, Huffington Post, Mashable, etc, do the same thing.

peetahb 14y ago
However, to HuffPo & TNW's credit, they do have original content that is mildly interesting. Mashable's original content is laughable at best.

zeedotme 14y ago

Zee from TNW again. There's been some confusion. Will post a follow up to this shortly to explain the mix up...but basically this HN commenter nails it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875

citricsquid 14y ago
So you (tnw) posted the article without attribution, the original author sees this, he tweets about it and asks wtf and then you (tnw) fix it and then you (personally) go on a tirade about how it's how the industry works blah blah blah conveniently ignoring that he knew it was originally not attributed and you reply as if it was, now you're admitting that you did in fact post it without attribution? All you had to do was apologise when he complained to you. You were in the wrong, whether it was an accident or not isn't the issue.
sophacles 14y ago
This really really reads like: "Oh uh yeah... this is what happened... we aren't just stating it's the case because it makes us look semi-ok..."

davidw 14y ago

Where are all the people defending "piracy" on this post? How much effort were a few paragraphs that got copied vs how much effort does it take to produce a movie, or a professionally recorded song?

jack-r-abbit 14y ago
Piracy is when it is the little guy stealing from the big guy... and that is ok. This is the big guy stealing from the little guy... and that is bad, mkay? lol
- sophacles 14y ago
  No it isn't that at all: Piracy: "here is a free copy of the avengers" Plagarism: "here, I made you a movie, I call it the avengers" One about replicas, one is about credit. There is a difference. Quit being disingenuous about them being the same.
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    I don't think they are the same and I don't think I claimed they were. Clearly the words have different definitions and apply to different actions. One takes the work of the creator and passes it along to others without the creator getting [paid|credit|traffic|whatever creator desires] for it. The other takes the work of the creator and passes it along as their own work without the creator getting [paid|credit|traffic|whatever creator desires] for it. I was trying (with humor) to explain why some people will defend piracy and then rail against plagiarism. They do have a common thread in kind of screwing the content creator a little... but in different ways. And often in a "Big Guy vs Little Guy" scenario, people will take the side of Little Guy... regardless of who took which action. Also... kind of funny to see the difference in the meaning of plagiarism among those outraged by this plagiarism. It seems that even among those that are angry here, there is a disagreement over whether plagiarism is or is not simply about giving credit. Some seem to think that it is an issue of credit or proper use of quotes... while others seem to think that even with proper credit given plagiarism still exists. So maybe plagiarism isn't so easy to define/avoid? Not sure.

drewblaisdell 14y ago

Update: image credit added after I posted this. Still, the image should be removed, this is copyright infringement. TheNextWeb is infamous for plagiarizing images for that section. Take this article, for example: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-technology-entrepreneurs-sean-parker/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-techno... The image at the top of the article is taken from this Dustin Curtis blog post: http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html (the filename of the image is even Screen-shot-2011-07-10-at-12.08.40-PM-520x245.png). There is no reference to Dustin Curtis's blog at all on the page, either. It is ridiculous that they find repeatedly doing this to be acceptable.

nikcub 14y ago
And another[1]: You should credit @dexterous for screenshot used @ http://thenextweb.com/in/2012/05/03/indian-isps-reportedly-blocking-access-to-vimeo-and-some-torrent-sites/ Citation: http://twitpic.com/9gr7y9 https://twitter.com/#!/dexterous/status/198036547830947841 [1] https://twitter.com/#!/dnene/statuses/198122429447548928 https://twitter.com/#!/dnene/statuses/198122429447548928
- bradmccarty 14y ago
  To clarify: I credited the source where I found the article, quite clearly, in the text prior to the image. I thought (wrongly, it would seem) that Rediff News had produced the image themselves. I did not see the tweet from Dhananjay, and never got an email or anything else about it. Now that I have seen it, I have credited my source, as I always attempt to do.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Thank you for at least mentioning that you work for TNW in your profile. It makes this ... (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bradmccarty http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=bradmccarty) ...less annoying. Compare that to zeedotme's ... (http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zeedotme http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zeedotme) ...which just feels sleazy.

moron 14y ago

All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it. The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.

joering2 14y ago
well, perhaps making it a public rant like in this example will make them think twice before next copy/past.
jinfiesto 14y ago
I kind of disagree on this point. Business Insider has always asked for my permission before syndicating my content.
- spicyj 14y ago
  See: http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider http://www.marco.org/2011/09/23/business-insider
astrodust 14y ago
There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. If that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.
- davidw 14y ago
  > There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. Either that, or a very, very old breed.
- csomar 14y ago
  I'm not bothered much by "ur" (since it's Twitter, and you have only 140 characters) than by his tone.
  - zedadex 14y ago

pwthornton 14y ago

You can't copyright facts, but The New Week article didn't have proper citation. In no work of academic writing or real journalism are you allowed to put one link at the bottom and call it a citation. I would never allow a post at interchangeproject.org to have that sloppy of citations, nor would I allow someone to write there very long if this is what they consider proper attribution. Is it plagiarism? I don't know about that, but the attribution in that post is appalling. The post is so close to the original that it should have just been one giant block quote. That's not journalism.

jeffpersonified 14y ago

Tech journalism is broken. Someone fix it. Please.

slantyyz 14y ago
Maybe we can start by not referring to a lot of tech blogs as journalism. Some are, but most aren't - including many that would like us to think they are.
- derleth 14y ago
  Then we'd have to stop referring to a lot of what goes on TV, radio, and in the newspapers as journalism.
  - slantyyz 14y ago
    Agree with that too!
    - jeffpersonified 14y ago
      Here here.
  - djcapelis 14y ago
    We sure do. I've been moving that direction for a few years now.

ChristianMarks 14y ago

The CEO's response amounts to the assertion that they will only plagiarize from people who won't call them out. What a nasty ungrateful insulting fellow.

gojomo 14y ago

Zee/TheNextWeb has a history of copying others' work without permission, including for one period HN comments. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640492 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640492 Note that what I was concerned about was not respectful excerpting: for a time, they were scraping every HN comment related to their links back to their site, without permission/notification to authors, without threading, with NOFOLLOW.

joering2 14y ago
Would be great to have a kickstarter for suing dirtbags, like in this example. Classactionstarter or something...
- officemonkey 14y ago
  douchestarter.
  - trefn 14y ago
    douchestopper?
javajosh 14y ago
Thanks for linking to this. Looks like there's a pattern here. Too bad for Zee.
jacobolus 14y ago
Why can’t PG or some hacker news admin simply block any stories from thenextweb?

benthumb 14y ago

The plagiarizer hasn't taken the care to assimilate an idea well enough so he can put it into his own words. The effort put into explaining something in one's own words has the powerful effect of spurring the imagination and intellect, which then can lead to new insights. The question is does Action Man care? Clearly not. Talk about steering clear of something -- thanks for the unintended warning.

zeedotme 14y ago

Zee again. Full response: http://bit.ly/JxoWae http://bit.ly/JxoWae

nowarninglabel 14y ago
"keep your mouth shut until you know all the facts" I think you learned a hard lesson here, but it's one that many of us had to learn the hard way. It's good to see an apology.
- Juha 14y ago
  "It's good to see an apology." After reading the response I feel he was avoiding giving a proper apology. Only thing he apologizes is that he didn't have all the information at first, which is a kind of non-apology.
  - dkersten 14y ago
    Yep, sounds like the usual issue-dodging non-apology damage-control bullcrap to me.
petercooper 14y ago
Good lessons learned. We've all been there at some point in life (the rash response thing). TheNextWeb usually has plenty of good, timely posts and it'd be a shame to consider it sullied so I, and hopefully others, hope some good can come out of this drama long term. (I've been in the role of editor and got the blame for sloppy fact-checking by one of my charges; it definitely helped me get my eye back on the ball :-))
Devilboy 14y ago
So are you going to fire the offender or what exactly are you doing to prevent this happening again?
turar 14y ago
"Finally... Lesson learnt? Don’t respond while emotions are running high" Wow, after all the drama you still don't get it. Lesson learned should have been: do not copy/paste, especially to such a degree where a majority of your "content" is actually not yours.

pitdesi 14y ago

There needs to be some sort of standard for citing other peoples work, sort of like an updated Chicago Manual of Style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_styles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_styles) for online publications. These days we have all these content mills that put out very little original work... I don't know what the proper method should be, how much work you can take etc. Also remember this - The New York Times spent weeks writing an article about how Wal-mart and Target learn your secrets and then Forbes wrote a knock-off that stole a bunch of their traffic. http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-article-and-got-all-the-traffic-2012-02/ http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-art... This also reminds me that as much as possible we should try to link to the original source on HackerNews, it's in the guidelines! (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Back in July, I spent a lot of time putting together an infographic for FeeFighters on the tech boom and bubble (http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/tech-boom-bubble.jpg http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/tech-...). We got links back from tons of magazines, including Forbes, Mashable, Fast Company, etc. Many of them didn't link to either us or KissMetrics (our partner who did the design work), but most complied after sending an email or tweet. One place, Bostinno - refused to link to us at all, despite multiple tweets and emails to them, for some reason deciding to credit Mashable: http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-a-tech-boom-or-bubble-lets-look-at-the-data-infographic/ http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-a-tech-boom-or-bubb... Massholes.

vsync 14y ago
> There needs to be some sort of standard for citing other peoples work You mean like <a href>, <cite>, <blockquote cite>, ...
benologist 14y ago
Not at all surprised bostinno never linked you, they're literally a spam site complete with 20+ HN accounts.
ilamont 14y ago
Former journalist here. Some years ago I attempted to create a standard called "Source Blocks" (see http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-experiment.html http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-experiment.... ). It's basically a paragraph of explanatory text that the author places at the end of the article, identifying what sources he/she used in the course of researching the article. It looked something like this. Sources cited, referenced, or consulted: Blog.basturea.com, American Journalism Review (ajr.org), Editorsweblog.org, Glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com, Techmeme.com, thelongtail.com, Washingtonpost.com, Wired The problem was, even without linking these sources, it took discipline to keep a running list while work was being done, and/or time at the end of the writing process to do the source block writeup. And the system did not account for higher "weight" for certain sources, much less the details that came from each source. It attracted a little attention, but I was only able to keep it up for another year. At the time, someone suggested creating some sort of browser extension to track all of the sources, which might have helped a little with other websites but would have been useless for phone or F2F interviews that occupy many journalists' time.

JangoSteve 14y ago

For what it's worth, the Huffington Post once did something similar with one of my posts, though it wasn't plagiarism, they basically just took my idea and ran with it. Even then, I'd say my situation was totally fair play. And given the content, it's not entirely inconceivable that they just had the same idea. All of that said, I tweeted them about my article [1] (nothing accusative, just a sort of "hey, check out my similar article from eight months ago for a little more insight." They tweeted back something equally civil and added a link to their article [2] within a minute. Anyway, that's a great way to handle such a situation, in my opinion. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/ [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-top-results_n_709142.html#s136186&title=A_is_for http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-top-...

sparknlaunch12 14y ago
Great example of how the majority of news sites behave. It seems that others play by different rules. I thought the foundation of any journalism is quoting your sources and writing your own material. Maybe the web has changed (for the worst).

johnfoo 14y ago

http://drawsomethingnaughty.com/100262 http://drawsomethingnaughty.com/100262

sparknlaunch12 14y ago

Journalism ethics and standards taken from Wikipedia [1]: The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements drafted by both professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations. The primary themes common to most codes of journalistic standards and ethics are the following: -Accuracy and standards for factual reporting -Slander and libel considerations -Harm limitation principle -Presentation [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

dyscrete 14y ago

Zee has apologized. https://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202154649183203329 https://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202154649183203329

jsavimbi 14y ago
CEO's these days... They have no fight in them.
bithive123 14y ago
A more direct link: https://docs.google.com/a/reed.edu/document/d/1M92qqFrK2zlqCoaQV_l_wuxIjDncLDD-8QMiPbRgJxU/edit https://docs.google.com/a/reed.edu/document/d/1M92qqFrK2zlqC... (the Fully Qualified Apology is at the end of the second-to-last paragraph)
chris_wot 14y ago
A twitter reply to someone who called him out, to a Google Docs non-apology which is behind a link shortener. Pardon me if I'm unimpressed.

laconian 14y ago

HN has the readership to effect positive change in the tech journalism arena. Can HN blacklist the most egregarious plagiarists?

dbin78 14y ago

A CEO should never respond to a situation in that way. He lost his cool; big time! I have always respected TNW, but today changes that.

dmschulman 14y ago

How is some anonymous Google Doc posted on the comments section of a Hacker News item an apology???? Make it public on front page of TNW.com

MisterMerkin 14y ago

I find it really hard to care about this. I'm amazed other people here seem to be up this in arms about it.

suborbital 14y ago

wow. and to think people make money doing this.

Xuzz 14y ago

."--'v

pocketdial 14y ago
bfro21jg309..............

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

leephillips 14y ago

Statutory damages for copyright infringement: minimum $750, maxiumum $150,000 per offense. Sue them. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504

mikecane 14y ago

I think there is an overarching issue here because I've experienced it myself several times. 1) Person writes about something out of passion and posts it for free (the blog carries no ads) 2) Person who gets paid to write reads it, has no record of ever writing about that topic before, and then does his/her own take -- hitting all the same key points (including using quotes from others that were in the original post) making him/her look like a thinker. 3) Original person is never cited, never acknowledged, while paid person merrily collects paycheck for "work." Having experienced it firsthand, I at least know several people never to take seriously as "thinkers" ever again.

noonespecial 14y ago

"We have a great many writers that submit articles to us. We do our best to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, but sometimes it does anyway. We'll fix it right now with credit and a link to your blog. Sorry about that, bro." See? Fixed. Easy.

seanp2k2 14y ago

Ahhh, so TNW really /is/ the next TechCrunch.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

CurtMonash 14y ago

TheNextWeb could have provided substantially the same article to its readers by block quoting with attribution rather than plagiarizing with attribution. Would that have been fair use? While a significant minority of people would say "No", I'm in the majority that would say "Yes". But hey -- I once blogged something only to have Mashable post the same news, taking credit for it as original research (but without plagiarizing the wording). I think that behavior was worse. Pete Cashmore promised me he'd fix it, then didn't follow through.

marcamillion 14y ago

Wow.....it's May 2012 and 'tech-savvy' companies still don't know how to handle basic stuff like copyright infringement by employees, bad customer service experiences and disgruntled partners (and employees) as a direct result of your own actions? Say sorry. Shut up. Avert PR crisis. Move on. Is it that hard people?

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

That's the most subtly annoying font I've seen.

saket123 14y ago

ohh my..reading Zee's tweets https://twitter.com/#!/Zee https://twitter.com/#!/Zee ..Amazing how little this guy cares about this. He basically tried to bully his way out of this before coming up with a meek apology. I will try to stay clear of TNW from now.

yycom 14y ago

It's not surprising when your articles have no byline.

yycom 14y ago
Which I see you've added, and very nicely too. This is how it should be done: it tells a random visitor following a random link who you are and why to trust your words. Very minor point: if it were at the top (e.g. sub-heading), we see your bona-fides before reading the article.

shanselman 14y ago

TheNextWeb did this to me a while back, if you remember the Only One Cloud meme. http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-its-not-as-unique-as-you-might-think/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-it... I went back and forth with the guy on Twitter and he was nice enough and updated it, but it's still curation, not creation. They are link blogging essentially, but with too much "copy and paraphrase."

anupj 14y ago

It makes me wonder what else have they plagiarised. Just saying.

BiWinning 14y ago

omg you got plagarized? omg on the internetz?? omg serialz??? It's the internet shit for brains. Lemme ask you: Ever downloaded a torrent? Ever hotlinked an image? The content you wrote sits on a web page, written in html and served with the http protocol. Anyone can save your webpage as file on their desktop, copy it, put it in a torrent, whatever. Getting plagiarized sucks but man up and understand the game you're playing here though you could argue that you do know the game by bitching about it on hacker news and reddit, that's a good place to bitch about such things, the girls here like to get worked about this kinda shit.

ceekays 14y ago

I have just noted that plagiarism is becoming the order of the day on the Internet.Someone has just plagiarised too a post a put on my blog last: http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-plagiarized-my-blog-post.html http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-plagiar.... SOPA was bad but I think we need something in these lines to curb plagiarism.

jeffmess 14y ago

Scumbag Zee. Steals your content, uploads a non-apology to Google Docs.

davesims 14y ago

Interesting to note that exactly a month ago today, thenextweb pointed out a far less egregious or even obvious offense: http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-its-this-weeks-media-news-in-review/ http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-... "And finally… Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from someone else when he was accused of plagiarism. Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him? We’ll let you decide what really happened…"

ChristianMarks 14y ago

Slate magazine picked up the story, but exercised responsible journalistic practice and credited Joshua Gross: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_tipping.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_t... And to think they did this without having to be told and without finding it necessary to insult the author--quite a contrast.