What Exactly Is Plagiarism Online? And Does It Really Matter Anyway?
from the not-as-simple-as-you-think dept
There’s a fascinating article by Rebecca Jennings on Vox which explores the vexed question of plagiarism. Its starting point is a post on TikTok, entitled “How to EASILY Produce Video Ideas for TikTok.” It gives the following advice:
Find somebody else’s TikTok that inspires you and then literally copy it. You don’t need to copy it completely, but you can get pretty close.
If it’s not “literally” copying it, then it’s more a matter of following a trend than plagiarism, which involves taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. Following a trend is universal, not just online, but in the analogue world too, for example in business. As soon as a new product or new category comes along that is highly successful, other companies pile in with their own variants, which may be quite close to the original. If they offer something more than the original – extra features, a new twist – they might even be more successful. However unfair that might seem to the person or company that came up with the idea in the first place, it’s really only survival of the fittest, where fit means popular.
More interesting than the TikTok advice is the example of Brendan I. Koerner, contributing editor at Wired and author of several books, also mentioned in the Vox article. It concerns a long and interesting story he wrote for The Atlantic last year. Jennings explains:
Someone published a podcast based exclusively on a story [Brendan I. Koerner]’d spent nine years reporting for The Atlantic, with zero credit or acknowledgment of the source material. “Situations like this have become all too common amid the podcast boom,” he wrote in a now-viral Twitter thread last month.
I’ve not listened to the podcast (life is too short), so I can’t comment on what exactly “based exclusively on” means in this context. If it means taking the information of Koerner’s article and repackaging it, well, you can’t copyright facts. Multiple verbatim extracts is a more complex situation, and might require a court case to decide whether under current copyright law it’s allowed.
I think there are more interesting questions here than what exactly is plagiarism, which arises from copyright’s obsessions with ownership. Things like: did Koerner get paid a fair price by The Atlantic for all his work? If he did, then the issue of re-use matters less. It’s true that others may be freeriding off his work, but in doing so, it’s unlikely they will improve on his original article. In a way, those pale imitations serve to validate the superior original.
If Koerner wasn’t paid a fair price, for whatever reason, that’s more of an issue. In general, journalists aren’t paid enough for the work they do (although, as a journalist, I may be biased). The key question is then: how can journalists – and indeed all artists – earn more from their work? The current structures based around copyright really don’t work well, as previous posts on Walled Culture have explored. One alternative is the “true fans” model, whereby the people who have enjoyed your past work become patrons who sponsor future work, because they want more of it.
For someone like Koerner, with a proven track record of good writing, and presumably many thousands of fans, this might be an option. It would certainly help to boost his circle of supporters if everyone that draws on his work gives attribution. That’s something that most people are willing to add, as his Twitter thread indicates, because it’s clearly the right thing to do. Better acknowledgement by those who use his work would always be welcome.
On the issue of drawing support from fans, it’s interesting to note that the Vox article mentioned at the start of this post has the following banner at the top of the page:
Financial support from our readers helps keep our unique explanatory journalism free. Make a gift today in support of our work.
This is becoming an increasingly popular approach. For what it’s worth, I now support a number of titles and individual journalists in precisely this way, because I enjoy their work and wish to see it flourish. The more other people do the same, the less the issue of plagiarism will matter. Once creators are earning a fair wage through wider financial support, they won’t need to worry about “losing” revenue to those who free ride on their work, and can simply view it as free marketing instead, at least if it includes proper attribution to the original. The main thing is that their fans will understand and value the difference between the original and lower quality derivatives.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon. Originally published to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: business models, copyright, credit, fairness, plagiarism, trends
Comments on “What Exactly Is Plagiarism Online? And Does It Really Matter Anyway?”
It’s not like all the newspapers carrying the same story every day is? Think they might think about why no one wants a law against frying the politician, cia, diplomats, etc brains?
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Even though it’s explicitly not a consideration in U.S. copyright law, I would say that most people have a “sweat of the brow” approach to plagiarism; if you’re going to claim a work as your own, you should have put in the effort to create it, not just copied something that someone else did. And in school, which is where most people are first cautioned against plagiarism, that effort is meant to demonstrate that you understand your research materials and can explain the subject, again rather than just copying someone else’s work.
The internet makes copying very easy, but the principles of demonstrating effort still apply.
Patronage
Patron an some of the lesser donation systems only really work for side hustle or already established people and even then there may be problems with sufficient cash flow.
Adding something extra, just for supporters, anything actually, incentivises more people to support.
That’s why the subscription model works as well as it does.
What would the extras be?
It all depends on resources and what won’t take away from the core product, whatever it may be. It could be anything from live streams, tutorials, to something in the mail.
Derivative doesn't always mean lower quality
A lot of reporting, especially when it is format shifted such as from a written article to a podcast, can be derivative but “better” than the original. This is true even if the second creator do no additional or unique research. It may not be better for every audience but for certain users it certainly could be. A more accessible format is one example but summarizing and simplifying even in the same format is also valid. If you take a book or a series of articles for example and intelligently summarize it into a 2 minute or 15 minute read that is valuable to many people even if it doesn’t include new or unique research or commentary.
I’m reminded of a video I found on YouTube (about a PanAm airplane that flew around the world near the start of WWII) that was based on a Medium article that in turn was based on a book. I ended up watching the video and reading both the article and eventually the book. Of the three, in my opinion, the book was written the worst and the hardest to get through.
I agree attribution would be appropriate and should be expected for such scenarios.
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I agree that derivative works are sometimes better but credit should always be given to the original work.
No one owns facts, if someone wants to start a podcast based on a historical incident or story, good luck, if it’s good it, ll get an audience. And maybe more people will read the original story, if there’s a credit in the podcast
I thought you were going to write about students who simply copy various articles online as part of their school work
People who like podcasts may buy the book it’s based on .
It’s great that writers on tech, politics etc can get donations to encourage them to write more
I find it hard to think of a story that would require 9 years of research
Maybe one example would be the book I’ll be gone in the dark based on a true crime story
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And maybe more people will read the original story if there’s a credit in the podcast.
Read again:
Someone published a podcast based exclusively on a story [Brendan I. Koerner]’d spent nine years reporting for The Atlantic, with zero credit or acknowledgment of the source material.
How is someone to find the original story if it’s not mentioned? This is why my licence requires me being guven credit. If someone copies my work to another site, I have no problem with that. If they copy it without attribution, then no one can discover my other works and that’s when I feel the need to take action, as I did once in the past.
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But in the story the podcast isn’t copying the original so your attribution license doesn’t apply. In this case it’s producing new reporting that, someone thinks, is only based on a single source. It actually brings up an interesting question, how many sources does someone need to use before it is considered original research instead of derivative? Related, how much information can you extract from a source before it is no longer appropriate to attribute or cite it?
I’ve never seen a newspaper article or heard a podcast where the person lists all their sources. They might credit in the “body” of the work a particularly influential source or prior work they used, such as ” did a lot of research on and found “, but almost nothing is ever formally attributed or cited.
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But in the story the podcast isn’t copying the original…
According to the relevant laws, creating a derivative work counts as copying, so your non-point is moot.
so your attribution license doesn’t apply.
Well, of course not. But then, Autie never claimed that the podcast was copying his work. You made that leap all by yourself.
Fallen at the first hurdle
“If it’s not “literally” copying it, then it’s more a matter of following a trend than plagiarism”
No. No, it’s not. Its copying and changing a little bit so you feel a bit better about your lack of ideas.
The Internet makes it easy to copy so don’t feel bad about it. That’s your argument.
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Who should be paid when I tell someone else the directions to the train station?
Who should be paid when I repeat the headlines I see in the newspaper by word of mouth?
Who would you like to sue for your pound of flesh today?
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And since when did Sabroni’s defense of giving attribution become defense of overweening copyright license fees? Granted, he is usually a copyright troll, but on this occasion he’s not doing that, so leave him alone.
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The direct paralleling of plagiarism and copyright infringement is entirely part of the copyright troll/maximalist playbook – equating not citing your source to stealing food from the mouths of babes. Fair use does not exist in their world; every single mention of their work even tangentially has to be nickeled and dimed.
Nah.
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The direct paralleling of plagiarism and copyright infringement is entirely part of the copyright troll/maximalist playbook…
So every time a member of a university’s faculty reminds their students to cite their sources to avoid plagiarism, they’re being a copyright troll/maximalist? Nah.
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Any time a professor asks for source citations to avoid plagiarism it’s to avoid plagiarism. They’re not going to be called copyright trolls or maximalists because they’re known to not be unless proven otherwise.
The same cannot be said of Sabroni, or other intellectual property offices who have tried to indoctrinate children by equating copyright infringement with plagiarism, like saying that “downloading a popular song is the same as your classmate taking your drawing that you worked very hard on and called it theirs instead of yours”.
Clearly nobody here has actually used tiktok – when you make a video based on another the source video, along with all the other copies, appears bottom right.
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How do TikTok’s filters tell the difference between an actual honest-to-God copy and an independently created similar video?
Plagiarism and copyright
Moody writes, “I think there are more interesting questions here than what exactly is plagiarism, which arises from copyright’s obsessions with ownership.”
I’m not sure why copyright comes into the question of what constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism as a condemnable notion predates and is independent of any copyright regime, as is its misunderstanding as theft of words or ideas, rather a fraudulent claim (most often implicit) to having originated them.
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Assuming that “theft” is an appropriate term to use in the context of spreading ideas, I’m not sure what “theft of words or ideas” could refer to other than using someone else’s words or ideas as if you thought of (“originated”) them yourself.
Copyright is indeed distinct from plagiarism. The remedy to plagiarism is providing clear attribution of the original work. If attribution was provided before the citing work was published, then there couldn’t have been plagiarism. Attribution does nothing to resolve copyright issues. Copyright gives the author of the original work almost total control over who uses the work, which parts of the work can legally get shared, for which purposes the work gets shared, and who can modify the work. Fair use excepting, copying or paraphrasing other people’s words is illegal because of copyright.
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Fair use excepting, copying or paraphrasing other people’s words is illegal because of copyright.
So if I copy the works of Shakespeare, I can get sued for copyright infringement because I live in a country that has fair dealing rather than fair use? 🙀
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This isn’t true. Proper attribution works similar way as how URLs work in web, it gives easy-to-navigate link to the original. If copyright owner actually gave some group of people permission to use the work, an attribution link might resolve how the ideas/techniques/processes originally spread to the situation at hand, and thus copyright owners can avoid infringement lawsuits when the path how the techniques spread is clear.
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And here a troll clearly shows his misunderstanding of how things work outside of Fantasyland yet again. Don’t bother to join us in the real world, terop. You’ve made yourself very unwelcome.
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The remedy to plagiarism is providing clear attribution of the original work.
Not quite. Since plagiarism consists of claiming another’s words as your own, regardless of any copyright in those words, avoidance of plagiarism would be clear attribution if you know who wrote the words, and a clear disclaimer if you don’t.
Nothing New
This has been a problem since there have been newspapers. What exclusive right does a new source have to a piece of news. As soon as A reports “The president will do X” then a dozen other news sources will report the same, based on what A has said. The ethical ones will say “News reports say the president will do X” which is maybe marginally more ethical.
Fun fact: here in Uruguay, attribution is compulsory, and therefore non-waivable.
Hiding sources is bad, no matter if the law allows it.