

Wired Editor Apologizes for Copying from Wikipedia in New Book - firebug
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/editor-of-wired-apologizes-for-copying-from-wikipedia-in-new-book/

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buugs
Using wikipedia as such a large reference that a significant portion of a book
is paraphrased and even more so that word for word contributions were found
even through editing out the copied work suggests a lack of knowledge as well
as laziness in the writing of his book.

~~~
norimaki
Let's not pretend that 'experts' are supposed to know everything. If you went
for a programming interview and were rejected because you didn't have all of
the regex syntax on the tip of your tongue, would you feel the same way? I
don't think it indicates a lack of knowledge or laziness. It's just an
acknowledgment of the central role that Wikipedia plays in research these days
combined with the ease of copy-paste functionality in word processing systems.
Had the same thing happened twenty years ago with the Encyclopedia Britannica
that might be a different story. But Anderson intended to rework the sections
he copied and forgot to. Sloppy work, yes, but it's so easy to see how someone
could make this mistake innocently.

~~~
zimbabwe
If I'm writing a book on a subject, I'm going to write it because I understand
it well and think I have something interesting to say. I won't just pick
something that I think makes money and then bullshit something into
profitability.

Come to think of it, that's also how I look for the good startup companies
amidst all the bad: When you find the ones run by people who understand what
they're doing, you find a satisfaction in their output that you don't find
elsewhere. 280North comes to mind, as does Contrast.io.

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mattmaroon
That's better than the Long Tail, which was just an unintentional work of
fiction due to it being based on data from faulty third-party analysts. At
least most of his Wikipedia info is probably accurate, and not essential to
the rest of the book.

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kragen
This means that all the copies of the book that have been printed so far are
infringing the Wikipedia copyright. Fortunately, there's no physical-world
equivalent of DMCA that allows Wikipedians to send an infringement
notification to bookstores that carry it, requiring them to immediately
disable access to the infringing material. But does it entitle Wikipedians
(perhaps represented by the Wikimedia Foundation) to a share of Anderson's
royalties as damages?

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gojomo
The funny thing to me is that given Anderson's message, he could reasonably
have used many large, credited excerpts as an example of how great 'free' is.

