Community business

[abomvubuso]

Hi all. I'm sorry that i'm going to diverge from the talking-politics(TM) and occupy you with this again, but i think its a matter that needs to be addressed, and this time properly. I'm afraid last time we didnt exhaust the issue as we should and problems remained between members; unfortunately, the two guys who should've been most inolved in the

Comments

[htpcl]

This is interesting. If I rehash someone's views in my own words, is that plagiarizing too?

[gunslnger]

Depends on how it's done. I'm not sure how to give a good example of what I mean. I'll try plagiarizing a snippet of one of the above articles in the way I mean.

[htpcl]

A lot of work, that. But would be curious. :-)

[gunslnger]

From article 2 of Abom's:

Google's new Chromebook laptop debuted this week, but Sony's massive data security breach only a few weeks ago shows that data security is extremely important for technology companies. Since this web-only computer relies on software and files being in the cloud rather than on its own hard drive, Google is running a large risk. Everything that you normally would keep secure on your laptop will actually be stored on Google's servers, and everything you do will be watched since you have to be signed-in to your Google account in order to do it.

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If you compare this to the original article, you can see how I merely rewrote what was there, and I can assure you that it took me very little thought to do it. I certainly didn't have to think about or process the ideas being presented by the original author, but the output looks like something I could have done on my own without it. I would call this undetectable plagiarism. Somewhere near this is the line I would draw between original work and plagiarism.

[sealwhiskers]

Well, the reason it wouldn't come up as serious plagiarism (as in whole sentences being identical, which would be highlighted in the search), is because a lot of newspapers and news blogs carry the same news. They do not own ideas as clearly as they own blocks of text.

Rowlings nicked a boatload of ideas for Harry Potter from Diana Wynne Jones (the Chrestomanci chronicles) and Neil Gaiman (Books of Magic), like a *shitton* of just re-written ideas. There would still be no case in court on her, because it is not considered plagiarism.

And with news it is even harder. News and the discussion around them is very very rarely considered intellectual ownership in any other sense than language, and even then, a sentence here and there being similar or identical between news organs, is considered fair game, newspapers do it all the time.

However, in academia and research, things are a little more picky.

[gunslnger]

So, then Abom's post wouldn't have shown up either, right?

[sealwhiskers]

That's not quite how it works. For instance when it comes to the Crane and Matten blog article and Abom's post, there are articles in the two digit numbers coming up. Mynewtechinfo, Urbanrelations, Sustainable Business, Chromebook and more. They ALL have large parts that are similar, and they all seem to originally stem from the bread and butter contents of the Sustainable Business article (although I'm not 100

[anfalicious]

It's still plagiarism even if you're plagiarising plagiarised work.

With regards to news articles being the same, it's because they're using AP or Reuters wires, in which case a reputable news organisation will say that they have done so.

[sealwhiskers]

It is a much more solid case when it is news organs that sell and when there is journalistic integrity involved.

[sealwhiskers]

oh, and no, I do not believe that Crane and Matten and several other on line newspages that summarized and re-wrote stuff (and came up in my generator when I did text checking) are really considered plagiarism either. It comes down to a pretty hard defined balance between summaries and re-writing and a certain level of original material, and also in what context the news is set up.

[anfalicious]

Are you pretending to be the originator of the opinion? Do you cite the original? If yes and no then yes, it's plagiarism.

[sealwhiskers]

If is an opinion piece, perhaps there could be enough to have half a legal discussion at least, but the context of social network discussion forum with no journalistic or artistic claims is still making it weak.

If the discussion is about more informal things, such as bad form and such, well yes, then there could be a discussion to be had, and I think this is what the 2 mods are blaming themselves for.

I however, do not think news summaries are a huge deal in this particular setting, and am probably getting a lot of flak for it. It is I believe a matter of opinion (unless it is copy/pasted to such an extent it could be called copyright infringement), and would be weak in court.

I do however vastly prefer when people name sources, even if the piece is completely re-written and full of mixed in original material of its own. (which can be considered the case in some of the longer posts in T_P.)