Plagiarism? Piracy? Or what do you call it?

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IMO, it is blatant mis-representation and extremely distasteful. I find it difficult to label it piracy, as it is sharing knowlege that is given freely and publicly available. If he were posting how-to articles from publications that are purchased, that would be piracy. Decency (in my case at least) would require at LEAST mentioning that I learned this from someone else, and reference that person if possible (I've learned many things from people that my antique brain just is not capable of bringing to the surface, and for that I am constantly asking forgiveness...) Now in the case of verbatim duplication in the posting, I have a very hard time thinking he cannot remember where he acquired the knowledge, so that argument would not hold water, and I feel that the great thing on the internet, is that if you find something that is given freely to the public by some generous individual (or cool site such as this) and you want to share it with others, that is what linking is for. This avoids the misrepresentation, gives credit where due (assuming the site you're linking to is not his...:eek:) and maybe even exposes those looking at the information to another corner of the world for them to learn and grow from...

Sad that people need to pump themselves up in this way...
 
While I agree with you Todd, it's a fact that if something is posted on a public forum, it becomes public domain and accessible to everyone.

I often see things on IAP and other sites that I like and would like to duplicate... and tutorials that are posted that I can use... I save many of them for future reference.
I also try to always acknowledge the poster and ask permission to try to duplicate.
 
took a quick peek; off the cuff, stream of consciousness, WAG:
My guess is he's running some kind of Perl crawler to populate his website.
He may have coding talent but more than likely no WW'ing skills.

NB: A link someone else posted led to his base page; he is a web developer.
He has a page for sending him email via a form.
I urge anyone who has issues with his actions to fill out the form and send him
a polite message.
Maybe he never received ethics education and doesn't realize what he's doing is
unethical and reprehensible. :rolleyes:
 
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Some of the items when you read the description it sounds like he has made them which any normal person should realize he did not do. I understand the public view and such and yes I agree you post it it is available. If he represented where they came from great but that is not the case in here.
 
TellicoTurning said:
While I agree with you Todd, it's a fact that if something is posted on a public forum, it becomes public domain and accessible to everyone.
Click to expand...

Chuck .. I know that seems to be the 'common wisdom' but it
isn't true.

It is accessible, but it is not public domain. In order for it to become part
of public domain, it would have to be published before 1923, the copyright
must have expired, it cannot be copyrighted OR the author must specifically
grant it to the public domain by publishing a statement to that effect.

Being publicly accessible is not the same thing as public domain which
has a specific legal meaning
 
TellicoTurning said:
While I agree with you Todd, it's a fact that if something is posted on a public forum, it becomes public domain and accessible to everyone.

I often see things on IAP and other sites that I like and would like to duplicate... and tutorials that are posted that I can use... I save many of them for future reference.
I also try to always acknowledge the poster and ask permission to try to duplicate.
Click to expand...

I agree, it becomes accessible to everyone, but not owned by everyone.

I believe it is very unethical and immoral to copy the pictures and writing of someone else and then claim it as my own. That is what this fellow is doing. When you read some of the 'projects', most of them start with "I." "I did this" and "I made this," when in fact he did not.

It would be like me taking some of the pen pics from this site and posting them on my own website and saying "I made this." The pics are here, freely posted on a public domain. But I do not, and you do not, and I would say that all IAP members would not. Why not? Because it's wrong, it's lying, stealing, cheating, immoral and unethical. Other than that, it's ok. :redface:
 
I don't go in for stealing in any form. If this person changed his listings to be a list of links to a given project / projects I would have a lot less problems with it. After all a link to the IAP from other sites may not be a bad thing.
Mark
 
There are tons of sites out there like this guy's. I often find them when looking for plans for something and I am amazed at how many links lead to plans that are identical in text and graphics only on a different sites. I often wondered who was scamming who? I guess it time to start watermarking you photos esp if used in a tutorial type setting. What a shame we have to resort to such measures. Even so scoundrels will always be one step ahead of the honest in dastardly deeds and many rungs below integrity.
 
Okay, I'm just not tech savvy or I can't read between lines. Where is this guy taking stuff from... and where is he putting it?
 
This guy is taking pictures and descriptions from other websites, mainly lumberjocks.com, and them posting them on his own website. The posts make it seem like this guy is doing all of this. His site is here. He didn't do any of the work that is posted on his site.
 
Folks, we all need to slow down a bit.

Here's what I now believe he's doing:

He's got a program which basically crawls the web looking for certain types of places and his program automatically includes what it finds in his web page.

It "looks" like he's claiming credit for the work because the info he's ingesting is written 1st person (I did this, I did that, next I did this, ad infinitum).
Each project has a title which doesn't look like a hyperlink but it is.
In other words, the title to each project is a link back to the original post.
And, when the link is followed, it becomes clear the text and pictures showing up on his page are just embedded inclusions from other pages.

When looked at in this light, it's not so bad. I looks a lot worse than it is.

Hugh and I have had one email conversation since his website came to light and I expect he's going to work to rectify the image he's created.
His original reply to me indicated he wasn't trying to claim the work of others as his own.
 
Good for you Gary. Cooler heads prevail. Now, let's hope he in fact follows through with his promise.
 
GaryMGg said:
When looked at in this light, it's not so bad. I looks a lot worse than it is.
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I dunno .. he chose to use a tool that is doing exactly what it was
designed to do. That's sort of like saying "I didn't mean for it to explode,
all I did was pull the pin" :tongue:
 
MesquiteMan said:
Regardless of why he is doing it, it is a copyright violation unless he has specific permission from the owner of the content.
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true, but unless you send him a cease and desist order, then he is perfectly within his rights. Unless there is specific language on the original sites about not using content without express permission.

The other part would be damages. what damages are you incurring due to his violation. If he's not profiting from the violation and you aren't profiting from the original content, the most you can expect is a removal or credit. Clearly wouldn't be worth getting lawyers involved.
 
MesquiteMan said:
Regardless of why he is doing it, it is a copyright violation unless he has specific permission from the owner of the content.
Click to expand...

Is that correct? There's nothing I could find on the LJ's site WRT copyright except for two things:

1. On the page which explains the responsibility for those who post, it states, "You are responsible for copyright issues. Do not upload photos that are not yours."

2. There's one line on any page which has a Pulse section which contains the statment, "©2005-2010 LumberJocks.com. All Rights Reserved."

I don't know what those rights are and what's reserved. I'm not sure linking and embedding links in another page is actually NOT fair use, particularly when there's a widget on each project page which has the option to "embed this project" with all the code necessary for embedding content.
Here's the embedding as an example:

​
 
What, linking to a post is now copyright infringement???
Here is another example of what I see is going on. I was recently searching for information concerning the Grey Jungle Fowl. My Google search turned up everything from Wikipedia entries to University reports as well as a fairly lengthy list of web sites from people that either breed them or sell them. In nearly every instance, including the reports from the Universities. the Wikipedia comments where copied and pasted verbatim onto all other sites. Some had been edited a bit to fit the context of the new site. others where exact copies photos and all. I saw nothing wrong with it at all. All these sights where intended to provide information about this bird. that does not mean that they all had to go discover first hand the information they shared. Actually there was very little more to learn from that long list of links after having read one. I can't say who actually wrote what first. it is possible that the Wiki entry was actually copied from the University site or Visa Verse. But the internet is intended to be an interlinked source of information. the idea is to not have to copy things from one place to another. simply link to it. but since it is the better interest of a web site owner to keep people on his site. it serves him better to paste it on his page.
 
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