Matthew Brown wrote:
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 11:48 PM, Brock Weller
<brock.weller(a)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