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In the process of investigating a quirky article for unrelated reasons, it popped up that massive swaths of text in [[Introduction to M-theory]] were copied verbatim and near-verbatim (rearranged) from the book 'The Turn of the Century'. This happened at least twice, in this edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Introduction_to_M-theory&diff=... And more was introduced later with the 'What does M stand for?' section. This has stood for 8 years in a massive article with plenty of attention, yet should've raised red flags all over the place (as said its a massive article, yet it has no sources cited.
How can we protect against these things?
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 11:48 PM, Brock Weller brock.weller@gmail.com wrote:
In the process of investigating a quirky article for unrelated reasons, it popped up that massive swaths of text in [[Introduction to M-theory]] were copied verbatim and near-verbatim (rearranged) from the book 'The Turn of the Century'. <snip>
How can we protect against these things?
I'm not sure we can in any certain way. There are bots that search for likely copyvios and more work will probably be done in this area. Rearranged text makes it hard to impossible, though.
(minor nitpick: 2004-2008 is four years, not eight).
However, I don't think there's all that much of it out there, frankly.
-Matt
Matthew Brown wrote:
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 11:48 PM, Brock Weller brock.weller@gmail.com wrote:
In the process of investigating a quirky article for unrelated reasons, it popped up that massive swaths of text in [[Introduction to M-theory]] were copied verbatim and near-verbatim (rearranged) from the book 'The Turn of the Century'. <snip>
How can we protect against these things?
I'm not sure we can in any certain way. There are bots that search for likely copyvios and more work will probably be done in this area. Rearranged text makes it hard to impossible, though.
Agreed. The information itself is not copyrightable, only the form of expression is. Rearranging text may or may not produce a derivative work. In some instances the mere influence of a copyright material could be enough to trigger that notion. The fact remains that we are all influenced by copyright material all the time, often unconsciously. The only way to be completely safe is to engage in our own original research, but that would raise a whole other range of objections.
(minor nitpick: 2004-2008 is four years, not eight).
Not if he lives in the fast lane. :-)
However, I don't think there's all that much of it out there, frankly.
That depends on your definitions.
Ec
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
However, I don't think there's all that much of it out there, frankly.
That depends on your definitions.
To be more precise, I feel that wholescale copyright violations of textual matter from printed sources such as books are rather rare. Copying text from a website is quite common, especially when a stub is being created.
-Matt
Given the relative ease of detection, might it be the other way round?
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 5:38 PM, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Matthew Brown wrote:
However, I don't think there's all that much of it out there, frankly.
That depends on your definitions.
To be more precise, I feel that wholescale copyright violations of textual matter from printed sources such as books are rather rare. Copying text from a website is quite common, especially when a stub is being created.
-Matt
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On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 12:20 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Given the relative ease of detection, might it be the other way round?
The issue is that copying is the easy choice, and not many people are going to pursue the easy choice by typing out the contents of a book.