Contest-Winning Poster To Promote Copyright Protection… Copied From Another Artist

from the define-irony dept

Reader A alerts us to this amusing story out of Taiwan, where it turns out that a student who won a contest put on by the country’s Intellectual Property Office, involving creating a poster to promote strong copyright protection, has been stripped of his prize after it was discovered that the poster was copied from a Dutch artist. The student has been ordered to return the approximately $1,600 he was awarded. What’s not clear is if the student was really just pranking the Intellectual Property Office or what. Separately, there’s this conundrum: if the Intellectual Property Office felt that a copied poster was the most successful in promoting respect of copyright, by taking away the prize are they actually harming their own case?

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Comments on “Contest-Winning Poster To Promote Copyright Protection… Copied From Another Artist”

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29 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Or it could actually be a stunt.

They get a contest “winner” to copy some guy’s work so they can come up and say “We take intellectual property so seriously that we won’t tolerate any kind of copying/plagiarism/whatever, even if it was done by the contest’s winner” so they can claim that they are, not only useful, but essential to defend artist’s rights.

Anonymous Coward says:

At the end of the article the IP Office warns that the former winner could be on the hook for statutory damages should the Dutch artist sue. They conveniently leave out their contribution to the infringement.

Also – if an official IP protection office wasn’t able to discern any infringement at the time of the award, how is anyone else, like YouTube or an ISP, supposed to do it, as so many rightsholders demand?

Anonymous Coward says:

They can’t win. Copying is so prevalent that trying to stop it is like trying to boil the ocean. Time and time again it is shown that even those who say copying is the most evil sin in the face of the world will copy from someone else without authorization. Copying is part of the human nature, it is how our culture and technology evolved and will continue to evolve.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Yes, copying is an integral part of human nature. To wit:

Copying test answers from the person sitting next to you.

Copying a term paper.

Copying information shared in confidence and then disclosing it in violation of the confidence.

Copying your co-worker’s work product and then passing it off as your own.

Copying…..

Copying…..

Copying…..

And for those who will inevitably say “But it screws your reputation.”, it is useful to bear in mind that this only happens when one is caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Lots of things are human nature, but as a society we have determined that some are acceptable and some are not.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

There is a huge difference between “copying” and “passing off as your own”.

All your examples except the third one include “passing off as your own” (copying test answers but saying it was you who answered them; copying a term paper and saying it was you who wrote it; and so on).

The third one (leaking information) is a different case: breaking someone’s trust on you. People also do that all the time (see Wikileaks), but a digression on the ethics of “leaking” is beyond the scope here.

Chronno S. Trigger (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

The consequences of copying are grater then being caught while one is doing it. Being put on the spot latter on in life and not being able to perform is one hell of a consequence. This is the main reason why we discourage copying test answers or co-worker’s work. It’s effects are grater then “you’ve been naughty”.

Continuing others work is something different and should be differentiated accordingly.

A violation of confidence shouldn’t even be brought up in this conversation, quit bringing up completely unrelated things.

Mike Masnick (profile) says:

Re: Re:

What does “Held for moderation” mean when it comes up after uploading a comment? I thought comments here are unmoderated.

It means your comment got caught in the spam filter, which we check every few hours. I went in and released your comment. I think the key thing that triggered it was the use of the phrase “term paper” as we get a ton of “buy your term paper” spammers here.

The spam filter weighs a bunch of factors, but certain phrases really are closely associated with spam.

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