3 ms·

Plagiarism spat over scientific poster prep advice escalates to legal threats

34 points by tokenadult 14y ago

jrockway 14y ago
Interesting. On the one hand, brief quotes are fair use. Using someone's ideas isn't even covered by copyright law. So I think it's the author that's being a bit heavy-handed, but on the other hand, I probably wouldn't retain the services of a lawyer to keep Appendix 5 of some brochure nobody reads -- it's definitely possible that the consortium copied a bit too much of the work, turning it from fair use to copyright infringement. One thing's for sure: there will be two winners in this case. And it won't be the author or the consortium.
- neurotech1 14y ago
  Plagiarism isn't necessarily a copyright violation. "Borrowing" ideas in academic publications can become plagiarism at some point. Commercial "copying" has different rules than in academia. In the post, it looks like CPBR copied large blocks of text, then accused the original author of copying them.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Ah, I assumed CPBR replied with a DMCA counternotice. Claiming they wrote the text is probably not going to end well for them. (I just realized: isn't this article guilty of exactly what the author thinks is wrong? That should be fun to watch.)
    - shardling 14y ago
      >(I just realized: isn't this article guilty of exactly what the author thinks is wrong? That should be fun to watch.) Well, no? You and the earlier posts missed this: >Many other passages of equivalent similarity appear throughout the two documents. Indeed, side-by-side comparison of his 2004 document with CPBR’s 2012 version shows the texts to be virtually identical.
      - jrockway 14y ago
        I meant the author of the original guide, who thinks that "using my ideas" is copyright infringement.
        shardling 14y ago
        That statement doesn't appear in the linked article. He says that copying his ideas is plagiarism, which is something different. And in this particular case he is suing over copyright infringement.
  - comex 14y ago
    Indeed. While in this case it seems that CPBR is clearly at fault, the quoted copyright notice is equally clearly incorrect: it is quite easy to reword someone's ideas in a way that would be considered plagiarism if presented academically but falls under fair use.

34 points by tokenadult 14y ago

Interesting. On the one hand, brief quotes are fair use. Using someone's ideas isn't even covered by copyright law. So I think it's the author that's being a bit heavy-handed, but on the other hand, I probably wouldn't retain the services of a lawyer to keep Appendix 5 of some brochure nobody reads -- it's definitely possible that the consortium copied a bit too much of the work, turning it from fair use to copyright infringement. One thing's for sure: there will be two winners in this case. And it won't be the author or the consortium.

neurotech1 14y ago
Plagiarism isn't necessarily a copyright violation. "Borrowing" ideas in academic publications can become plagiarism at some point. Commercial "copying" has different rules than in academia. In the post, it looks like CPBR copied large blocks of text, then accused the original author of copying them.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Ah, I assumed CPBR replied with a DMCA counternotice. Claiming they wrote the text is probably not going to end well for them. (I just realized: isn't this article guilty of exactly what the author thinks is wrong? That should be fun to watch.)
  - shardling 14y ago
    >(I just realized: isn't this article guilty of exactly what the author thinks is wrong? That should be fun to watch.) Well, no? You and the earlier posts missed this: >Many other passages of equivalent similarity appear throughout the two documents. Indeed, side-by-side comparison of his 2004 document with CPBR’s 2012 version shows the texts to be virtually identical.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      I meant the author of the original guide, who thinks that "using my ideas" is copyright infringement.
      - shardling 14y ago
        That statement doesn't appear in the linked article. He says that copying his ideas is plagiarism, which is something different. And in this particular case he is suing over copyright infringement.
- comex 14y ago
  Indeed. While in this case it seems that CPBR is clearly at fault, the quoted copyright notice is equally clearly incorrect: it is quite easy to reword someone's ideas in a way that would be considered plagiarism if presented academically but falls under fair use.