[TAG] Talkback:128/saha.html (A case of copyright violation / plagiarism ?)

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Sun, Oct 08, 2006 at 03:17:11PM +0530, Baishampayan Ghose wrote:
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> On Sunday 08 October 2006 02:57 AM, Benjamin A. Okopnik cobbled together
> some glyphs to say:
> Ben,
> 
> >> While I understand that Saha provided a link back to the original
> >> source in his article, but I fail to understand the use of such an
> >> article.  The so-called newer version of the article is in no way
> >> better than the original one.
> > 
> > You appear to be assuming that the article was accepted here with full
> > knowledge of its plagiarized status - in fact, had been compared against
> > the original - and published in spite of it. Would you care to clarify
> > that?
> 
> Well, I have been an astute reader of LG for quite some time, and I
> really like LG. I didn't assume your [the editors'] prior knowledge of
> its plagiarised status, but I thought you missed it somehow. That's why
> I thought it was my duty to inform you about the incident. I have no
> intention of maligning LG is any way as I hold it in very high esteem.

Your original query failed, spectacularly, to make this apparent;
instead, your words strongly implied complicity on the part of LG, which
I found extremely offensive. I'll take this latter statement of yours as
a correction to the above, but I would appreciate it in the future if
you, in your hurry to accuse someone of odious practices, did not make
your statements too broadly inclusive. This tends to anger the very
people whom you're asking to correct the problem, which is not a
particularly wise move.

Despite my initial annoyance, I do appreciate you bringing this to our
attention; it's a vitally-important issue to LG as a whole. In fact, it
brings up a whole raft of important related questions - some of which
have been causing me headaches (don't worry, I'm not blaming those on
you. :) E.g., in this aspect, we've been running on the assumption that
people writing for an Open Source publication will follow an informal
honor system - but this appears to be a mistaken assumption. What is the
right solution to this? How do we get the importance of it across to our
authors, and what is the right thing to do in case of violations? There
are a number of other, similar questions, and few clear, obvious
answers. It's going to take a while, but I can promise you that it will
not just fade away quietly.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *