
Plagiarism - endtwist
http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/23049725899/plagiarism
======
petercooper
The old adage is you can't copyright facts and there was certainly no
requirement for TNW to do any "original research" to share these findings.

However, when you copy/use facts, you wade into hot water if you also copy the
structure and the way those facts were originally _expressed._ The original
TNW article shown here seems to step over that line with a barely masked copy
of the original paragraphs.

What bothers me more, though, is that seemingly a CEO of a media organization
has failed to do any damage control based around a genuine grievance (that
wasn't even aggressively delivered). Saying things like _"think it's pretty
ridiculous that you're even getting the slightest bit annoyed about this"_ ,
_"needless to say, we'll be staying well clear of anything ur involved with in
future for fear of ridiculous reaction"_ and using _"u do realise that about
50% of all publications is content sourced from other publications right?"_ as
a sort of defence is a horrible PR line for a proprietor to play, even if
that's his honest opinion.

~~~
zeedotme
I'd honestly much rather be brutally honest than go down the artificial PR
route.

~~~
javajosh
I upvoted you (really) because I totally agree with you: CEOs like you
_should_ be completely, brutally honest. Especially when this reveals you to
be oafish and unprincipled.

This policy is good for customers (so they can avoid your products) good for
investors (so they can avoid investing in your company) and good for
prospective employees (so they can not).

~~~
petercooper
I think that could make a fascinating blog post and then discussion on HN. If
you want to ride on the back of this one (you know how HN has flavors of the
week), consider it! :-)

------
drewblaisdell
Update: image credit added after I posted this. Still, the image should be
removed, this is copyright infringement.

TheNextWeb is infamous for plagiarizing images for that section. Take this
article, for example: [http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-
techno...](http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-technology-
entrepreneurs-sean-parker/)

The image at the top of the article is taken from this Dustin Curtis blog
post: <http://www.dustincurtis.com/press_on.html> (the filename of the image
is even Screen-shot-2011-07-10-at-12.08.40-PM-520x245.png). There is no
reference to Dustin Curtis's blog at all on the page, either.

It is ridiculous that they find repeatedly doing this to be acceptable.

~~~
zeedotme
we have a strict policy in place to make sure this doesn't happen.

If it does, and it really shouldn't have beyond a year ago (when we really
clamped down on it with our authors)... we fix it.

If it ever does happen, I assure you that all it takes is one email to
office@thenextweb.com and we'll have it resolved.

But I assure you that this "care free" image you might have of us when it
comes to posting other peoples images just isn't reality.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Strange that this has been greyed out? Not condoning the act of plagiarism but
seems fairer to allow all parties to say their bits?

~~~
dkokelley
I do wish this wasn't downvoted to grey. This is content I think most of us
will find interesting and relevant to the discussion.

I understand that HN allows downvotes of disagreement, even though in this
case it buries the most relevant information.

~~~
rosstafarian
I actually think the grey has the opposite effect, makes the post really stand
out and i go out of my way to high-light and read it, if only to see why the
person was downvoted so much.

To stay on topic I can't believe the guy still hasn't apologized. Judging by
his attitude and replies he's probably too busy self-rationalizing about how
he's right and if everyone else wasn't an idiot we would all agree with him.

~~~
dkokelley
Mentioned elsewhere: I'm not complaining about the specific text contrast. My
concern is with downvotes being misused (albeit for my own definition of
misused).

Downvoting also has the effect of lowering the comment's position relative to
other replies. No matter the color, the comment will appear below someone who
gets a higher score, even though I can't imagine a more relevant comment than
from the guy this entire thread (and post) is really centered around.

------
scott_s
Yes, you were plagiarized. TheNextWeb was in the wrong, and they made it worse
by their reaction.

But I also feel that the main insights of your posts were not your own. They
were that of the NY Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum. That is, I feel the
main insight of your post were two things: the doubling of tips, and the
attribution of this to the buttons on the credit-card machine. Your
contribution was to look up a few other stats to get the $144 million figure.

~~~
droithomme
I think you bring up a reasonable point: that the forced tipping system with
no values below 20% was previously discussed in other articles such as that of
Grynbaum from January 8, 2012:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-
ca...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-cabs-wont-
have-to-have-tvs.html)

In fact it's not a secret at all since New Yorkers and those visiting the city
are quite acquainted with the system, it's no secret, so I am not sure Mr.
Grynbaum is a reasonable original source of information about the system,
millions who have taken a taxi are reasonable sources.

Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross
hotlinked his image of the interface, dating back to February 2011:

<http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php>

Their reaction was similar to many others, that a design that forces a minimum
tip of 20% is an annoying dodgy system for forcible shakedowns of hapless
credit card customers, and sure to enrage many people.

GoodExperience's blog's conclusion was nearly the opposite of Mr. Gross's:

> The lesson: details matter. One change to one button in the interface
> changes the experience from delightful to annoying, leaving the rider
> feeling taken advantage of.

The cab customers are the victims here, they are in essence a captive audience
who can not seek competition since the system has been dictated system wide by
the same government that profits well from the system since it prevents
drivers from underreporting tips.

Mr. Gross's original contribution was to point out that by looking at this
from the viewpoint not of the customer, but of the business and the
government, the system was a success as it has resulted in much profit for
them.

Mr. Gross published this yesterday, on May 13, 2012. TheNextWeb published
their "article" a few hours after Gross's article reached high on Hacker News.
This is likely where Harrison and Zee became aware of it as it seems they are
readers of HN. Harrison's article was then published today, May 14th.

None of the previous articles about the system bring up Mr. Gross's main
points, that the design of the system has the advantage of increasing profits
for the business.

Not stated but worth discussing is that it only works because there is a
captive audience with no other choices who do not discover their tipping
options are so limited until they go to pay at the end of the ride. These
issues would make interesting discussions for even more articles. Perhaps TNW
could have even written one. Instead they copied an article, stole it, because
I have personally compared the articles word by word and found that it is a
LIE to say TNW published original content or that the article was truly
written by Harrison.

Under Fair Use I am now citing BOTH for comparison lest there be any doubt.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY JOSHUA GROSS:

> The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year.
> There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers
> to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen
> system for payment.

> During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for
> tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was
> roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage
> jumped to 22%.

HARRISON WEBER's ALLEGED ORIGINAL CONTENT, DEFENDED AS ORIGINAL BY ZEE KANE:

> The average New York City taxi driver makes $90,747 in gross revenue per
> year (less some hefty operating expenses). In 2007, NYC required cab drivers
> to begin accepting cards, which involved installing a touch screen system
> for payment in all ~13,267 cars.

> During payment, users are shown three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%
> and 30%. Back when cabs were cash-only, the average tip was around a modest
> 10%. But since this system was introduced system, the average tipping
> percentage jumped to 22%.

Who here will respond to this post and claim that Harrison Weber is not an
unrepentant plagiarist and Zee Kane his belligerent defender? Speak now.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
> _Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross
> hotlinked his image of the interface_

Although Mr Gross did not _hotlink_ the image. Notice the images locations and
file types are different.

~~~
droithomme
Thanks for the correction there, you're right, he actually provided a link
back to GoodExperience and even set the images Title tag to state that the
photo was from GoodExperience.

------
gojomo
Zee/TheNextWeb has a history of copying others' work without permission,
including for one period HN comments. See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640492>

Note that what I was concerned about was not respectful excerpting: for a
time, they were scraping _every_ HN comment related to their links back to
their site, without permission/notification to authors, without threading,
with NOFOLLOW.

~~~
joering2
Would be great to have a kickstarter for suing dirtbags, like in this example.
Classactionstarter or something...

~~~
officemonkey
douchestarter.

~~~
trefn
douchestopper?

------
anonymouspie
TheNextWeb is basically a content farm whose business model is to rapidly push
out rewritten posts as soon as possible and as often as possible. Your story
doesn't surprise me at all because I see it every single day with many other
websites, both popular and not. All you have to do is look at Techmeme to see
this in action, every single post is rewritten by some TNW writer, and sadly
Techmeme's human curators favor TheNextWeb as a preferred source despite their
post model being 100% spinning of existing content. The best case scenario -
if the original creator is lucky - is a tiny link to the original source in
the footer of a TNW spun article.

To be fair, Huffington Post, Mashable, etc, do the same thing.

~~~
peetahb
However, to HuffPo & TNW's credit, they do have original content that is
mildly interesting. Mashable's original content is laughable at best.

------
zeedotme
Update: see this comment on HN. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875>

Zee from TNW here.

Someone has to explain to me exactly what we should have done differently
here.

I honestly have absolutely no idea what we should have done differently here
to illustrate an interesting fact with our readers and reference the original
source (we did that _twice_ in the article...even with his full name (a
screenshot of which he conveniently didn't include in his post))...and still
he comes out guns blazing like he wrote a full-on opinion piece and we decided
to just copy/paste.

We work immensely had to product original content as well as link to original
sources when deserved...this case was absolutely no different.

I'm honestly amazed that this is crawling up Hacker News quite frankly.

~~~
Braasch
The author should have put quotes around the paragraphs that were blatantly
copy and only slightly tweaked to show it came directly from the piece and
wasn't written by Harrison.

Oh, and your Twitter response was laughably immature to me.

~~~
zeedotme
that I can appreciate, but to come out and call it "plagiarism" publicly
although we couldn't have done more to reference him...is absurd to me.

Feels like this guy is trolling every single one of us here - myself included
- to get a reaction.

~~~
scott_s
If I say, "This text is from John Doe," and then I proceed to quote John Doe
to the point that the majority of my text is, in fact, John Doe's, then I have
plagiarized John Doe.

In other words, attribution does not save you from plagiarism.

------
droithomme
Thanks for letting us know about this. Your article was obviously original
research which many "mainstream" media outlets have given up on. The article
referenced was clearly copied directly from your original research and article
without giving proper attribution or payment. It also misrepresented the
source of the material by claiming to be written by a "Harrison Weber". In
addition, the exchange shown with Zee where, caught in a lie, he threatens you
by saying he will punish you by "staying well clear of anything ur involved
with in future", shows that he is a disreputable person. Thank you for warning
us about this site. I will stay away from TheNextWeb and anything they or
their present staff are involved in in the future.

------
mikecane
I think there is an overarching issue here because I've experienced it myself
several times.

1) Person writes about something out of passion and posts it for free (the
blog carries no ads)

2) Person who _gets paid to write_ reads it, has no record of _ever_ writing
about that topic before, and then does his/her own take -- hitting _all_ the
same key points (including using quotes _from others_ that were in the
original post) making him/her look like a _thinker_.

3) Original person is never cited, never acknowledged, while _paid_ person
merrily collects paycheck for "work."

Having experienced it firsthand, I at least know several people never to take
seriously as "thinkers" ever again.

------
Ahmes
I'm pretty sure there is an XKCD about this.

Didn't we conclude yesterday that there was a fundamental flaw in the original
author's assumptions in how tips get reported and preliminary evidence
suggests Taxi drivers are now making _less_?

Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it may legitimately
be cited as fact in a Wikipedia article.

Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it will probably
also go as an unquestioned anecdote in a thousand VC pitches.

~~~
MSM
The XKCD is a little different:

1) Find (false) fact on Wikipedia. 2) Include fact in your important paper
(journal, etc) 3) Fact is found on wikipedia to be false, and is removed 4)
Fact is later found in your journal, and is then added to Wikipedia with a
reference to your important findings. 5) Fact cannot be removed because it was
been referenced from a journal

~~~
derleth
The missing step:

6) Since the fact is attributed to your journal, _it is only relevant to
document what your journal says._ Wikipedia article gets updated to reflect
the fact _your journal is wrong._

------
laconian
I think the big sites that have been SEO'd to death (esp. HuffPo) don't have
journalistic scruples; content is merely means to an end for them.

~~~
benologist
They've basically turned journalism into Demand Media - churn out SEO'd,
cheap, content with the added bonus of sites like HN, Reddit etc adding SEO
weight when they're lucky. It's even cheaper if someone else writes that
content and they just have to reword the important bits.

It's sad to see HN starting to vote up AOL, Gawker etc crap, and it's sad to
see other blogs adopting that model because it works so well.

------
pwthornton
You can't copyright facts, but The New Week article didn't have proper
citation. In no work of academic writing or real journalism are you allowed to
put one link at the bottom and call it a citation.

I would never allow a post at interchangeproject.org to have that sloppy of
citations, nor would I allow someone to write there very long if this is what
they consider proper attribution. Is it plagiarism? I don't know about that,
but the attribution in that post is appalling.

The post is so close to the original that it should have just been one giant
block quote. That's not journalism.

------
shanselman
TheNextWeb did this to me a while back, if you remember the Only One Cloud
meme. [http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-
it...](http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/16/apples-icloud-icon-its-not-as-
unique-as-you-might-think/) I went back and forth with the guy on Twitter and
he was nice enough and updated it, but it's still curation, not creation. They
are link blogging essentially, but with too much "copy and paraphrase."

------
destraynor
I've experienced this and I sympathise with you. I don't know the specifics of
this case, so my comment from here on is about the general practise of content
theft and barely-there attribution.

This is unfortunately a way of life for many of the larger tech sites, and
will be until they adapt or suffer their inevitable faith.

For every one person who linked up my Android vs Condom post (which went
hyper-viral), 10 more stole the images and put in a tiny gray on white text
link somewhere at the bottom of the post. And these weren't no name sites,
they were big 200K+ reader sorta sites.

There are a small number of respectable people who link to a site with the
genuine intention of sending traffic its way (Daringfireball would be one of
them). The remainder do their absolute best to hide it, as you noted, some
only do it when called out.

------
zeedotme
Zee again. Full response: <http://bit.ly/JxoWae>

~~~
ChristianMarks
A Google doc, very interesting. The use of bit.ly is also interesting--someone
may unwittingly click the link and reveal himself through his Google account.
Perhaps the intention is to discover who is reading it (for what purpose I can
only speculate). It isn't posted on TNW for reasons that are unclear (as
others have noted). Perhaps the intention is to crowdsource the editing until
the statement eventually converges to what passes for a sincere apology, which
could then be posted on TNW. Of course the use of bit.ly and Google Docs could
be entirely innocent.

~~~
skore
> _innocent_

Yeah, well, after reading his responses here, I wouldn't go with that word,
but rather with another one that starts with in - and ends with competent.

------
ChristianMarks
The CEO's response amounts to the assertion that they will only plagiarize
from people who won't call them out. What a nasty ungrateful insulting fellow.

------
binarydud
And people still wonder why publications like these aren't considered serious
purveyors of content. The goal isn't to spread information and break stories,
instead it's to get eyeballs and sell advertisements.

------
benthumb
The plagiarizer hasn't taken the care to assimilate an idea well enough so he
can put it into his own words. The effort put into explaining something in
one's own words has the powerful effect of spurring the imagination and
intellect, which then can lead to new insights. The question is does _Action
Man_ care? Clearly not. Talk about steering clear of something -- thanks for
the unintended warning.

------
jack-r-abbit
Before I get angry about this I feel I need more info. Neither of the
screenshots go down far enough to get to the bottom. The currently available
article has Joshua quoted under the image of the tip screen and also has
Joshua listed as a source at the bottom. Since this "plagiarized by TNW"
article only mentions them adding the "here's what Joshua found" line in the
middle & Zee seems to think they were pretty clear of sources, I am curious if
those other 2 attributions were there the whole time or also added after the
tweet. Also, the TNW article doesn't cite the source of that screen shot of
the tip screen.. but then neither does Joshua's article. Where'd that come
from? Is it stock imagery for anyone to use? or did Joshua take the photo
himself?

Edit: oops. it appears Joshua's original article does credit the image (via
subtle link "title") and links it back to the source article. However, that is
a pretty subtle way to cite a source, IMO. The TNW article gives no credit for
the image at all.

------
JangoSteve
For what it's worth, the Huffington Post once did something similar with one
of my posts, though it wasn't plagiarism, they basically just took my idea and
ran with it. Even then, I'd say my situation was totally fair play. And given
the content, it's not entirely inconceivable that they just had the same idea.

All of that said, I tweeted them about my article [1] (nothing accusative,
just a sort of "hey, check out my similar article from eight months ago for a
little more insight." They tweeted back something equally civil and added a
link to their article [2] within a minute.

Anyway, that's a great way to handle such a situation, in my opinion.

[1] <http://www.alfajango.com/blog/google-one-letter-suggestions/>

[2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-
top-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/08/google-instant-top-
results_n_709142.html#s136186&title=A_is_for)

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Great example of how the majority of news sites behave. It seems that others
play by different rules. I thought the foundation of any journalism is quoting
your sources and writing your own material. Maybe the web has changed (for the
worst).

------
dmschulman
How is some anonymous Google Doc posted on the comments section of a Hacker
News item an apology????

Make it public on front page of TNW.com

------
jeffpersonified
Tech journalism is broken. Someone fix it. Please.

~~~
slantyyz
Maybe we can start by not referring to a lot of tech blogs as journalism. Some
are, but most aren't - including many that would like us to think they are.

~~~
derleth
Then we'd have to stop referring to a lot of what goes on TV, radio, and in
the newspapers as journalism.

~~~
slantyyz
Agree with that too!

~~~
jeffpersonified
Here here.

------
laconian
HN has the readership to effect positive change in the tech journalism arena.
Can HN blacklist the most egregarious plagiarists?

------
davesims
Interesting to note that exactly a month ago today, thenextweb pointed out a
far less egregious or even obvious offense:

[http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-
apple-...](http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/04/15/netflix-amazon-apple-its-
this-weeks-media-news-in-review/)

"And finally…

Nobody likes plagiarism, but an interesting nugget emerged this week. Poynter
reported on a Fast Company blogger who said that he meant to steal from
someone else when he was accused of plagiarism.

Author Josh Linkner was busted for stealing the opening lines of a blog post
by Chris Dixon. Now, Linkner did respond on Twitter and moves were made to
amend the ‘mistake’, but the comment he posted to explain/justify the non-
attributed use of someone else’s text sounded a little…schoolboy-ish – he said
a friend had sent him the excerpt. So let’s assume a friend did send him the
excerpt…why wasn’t it attributed to him?

We’ll let you decide what really happened…"

------
Mz
Not defending this at all but I am reminded of my experience doing some
freelance writing. I wrote a number of health articles. Several referenced
published standard guidelines on how much exercise a person needs per week. In
spite of stating the reference and altering the phrasing, I had articles come
back to me for revision on the idea that I had copied and pasted some article
I had never heard of which happened to also use the same source and cite the
same figures.

Not the same thing as what happened here but I can relate to the situation. I
think it is generally getting tough to avoid, given the sheer volume of
material going up on the web.

------
noonespecial
"We have a great many writers that submit articles to us. We do our best to
make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, but sometimes it does anyway. We'll
fix it right now with credit and a link to your blog. Sorry about that, bro."

See? Fixed. Easy.

------
CurtMonash
TheNextWeb could have provided substantially the same article to its readers
by block quoting with attribution rather than plagiarizing with attribution.

Would that have been fair use? While a significant minority of people would
say "No", I'm in the majority that would say "Yes".

But hey -- I once blogged something only to have Mashable post the same news,
taking credit for it as original research (but without plagiarizing the
wording). I think that behavior was worse. Pete Cashmore promised me he'd fix
it, then didn't follow through.

------
sparknlaunch12
Journalism ethics and standards taken from Wikipedia [1]:

The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements drafted by both
professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and
_online_ news organizations.

The primary themes common to most codes of journalistic standards and ethics
are the following:

-Accuracy and standards for factual reporting

-Slander and libel considerations

-Harm limitation principle

-Presentation

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards>

------
ceekays
I have just noted that plagiarism is becoming the order of the day on the
Internet.Someone has just plagiarised too a post a put on my blog last:
[http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-
plagiar...](http://edceekays.blogspot.com/2012/05/face-of-malawi-plagiarized-
my-blog-post.html). SOPA was bad but I think we need something in these lines
to curb plagiarism.

------
ChristianMarks
Slate magazine picked up the story, but exercised responsible journalistic
practice and credited Joshua Gross:
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_t...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/05/15/taxi_button_tipping.html)

And to think they did this without having to be told and without finding it
necessary to insult the author--quite a contrast.

------
dbin78
A CEO should never respond to a situation in that way. He lost his cool; big
time! I have always respected TNW, but today changes that.

------
jgmmo
Sorry man, I read that article and thought it's insights were profound. I am
sorry to hear that they basically just 'spun' your hard work. Doesn't seem
fair that you do the hard work but they end up with the lions share of the
hits...

To SEO Experts: Should they have given the original author a 'canonical' link
from that page? Would that have helped matters SEO wise?

~~~
wmf
IMO giving SEO juice doesn't excuse plagiarism.

------
marcamillion
Wow.....it's May 2012 and 'tech-savvy' companies still don't know how to
handle basic stuff like copyright infringement by employees, bad customer
service experiences and disgruntled partners (and employees) as a direct
result of your own actions?

Say sorry.

Shut up.

Avert PR crisis.

Move on.

Is it that hard people?

------
jeffmess
Scumbag Zee. Steals your content, uploads a non-apology to Google Docs.

------
davidw
Where are all the people defending "piracy" on this post?

How much effort were a few paragraphs that got copied vs how much effort does
it take to produce a movie, or a professionally recorded song?

~~~
Xylakant
The question is not whether pirating a movie is morally right or wrong but
rather "how much damage to the internet and the society are we willing to
accept when chasing people who copy movies?". Having to pay a fine when you're
caught copying a song is fine. Having to pay inflated damage claims (tens of
thousands of dollars for a single song) is not. Monitoring large portions of
the internet only to support an industry that missed a crucial point is not
fine either. So that's why no one defending piracy shows up here: Since pretty
much no one is defending piracy as "morally right."

(edit: fixed stupid autocorrection errors.)

~~~
davidw
I think it's a complex, and nuanced subject with no easy answers, and agree
with you that things are likely tilted too far in favor of content producers.
Draconian solutions are not a solution I favor.

That said, I have been here a while and see an awful lot of commentary that
seems indicative that the authors neither think nor care much about the fate
of content producers. There are plenty of other intelligent comments too, but
I really did notice a big difference on this thread compared to one about
piracy.

See mikeash's comment for instance, which says that piracy just isn't as bad
as plagiarism.

------
anupj
It makes me wonder what else have they plagiarised. Just saying.

------
yycom
It's not surprising when your articles have no byline.

~~~
yycom
Which I see you've added, and very nicely too. This is how it should be done:
it tells a random visitor following a random link who you are and why to trust
your words. Very minor point: if it were at the top (e.g. sub-heading), we see
your bona-fides _before_ reading the article.

------
dyscrete
Zee has apologized.

<https://twitter.com/#!/Zee/status/202154649183203329>

~~~
chris_wot
A twitter reply to someone who called him out, to a Google Docs non-apology
which is behind a link shortener. Pardon me if I'm unimpressed.

------
seanp2k2
Ahhh, so TNW really /is/ the next TechCrunch.

------
leephillips
Statutory damages for copyright infringement: minimum $750, maxiumum $150,000
per offense. Sue them. <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504>

------
nazgulnarsil
That's the most subtly annoying font I've seen.

------
suborbital
wow. and to think people make money doing this.

------
moron
All these shitheel sites do the same thing. BusinessInsider often doesn't even
do the work of lightly rewriting paragraphs, they just rip content off
wholesale. It's a dirty game, but I dunno if much can be done to stop it.

The CEO's reaction is a disaster unto itself. Shameful.

~~~
astrodust
There's a new breed of CEOs who use 'ur' in public correspondence. If that
isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.

~~~
csomar
I'm not bothered much by "ur" (since it's Twitter, and you have only 140
characters) than by his tone.

~~~
tlrobinson
I refuse to shorten words to "SMS speak", even on Twitter. I can't stand when
supposedly intelligent adults do it.

~~~
Fuzzwah
I used to be like you, then I realised that the English language has been ever
evolving. Being prejudiced against efficiency has rarely turned out well.

~~~
Prophasi
Eh, I still agree with the prejudiced guy.

------
pitdesi
There needs to be some sort of standard for citing other peoples work, sort of
like an updated Chicago Manual of Style
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation#Citation_styles>) for online
publications. These days we have all these content mills that put out very
little original work... I don't know what the proper method should be, how
much work you can take etc. Also remember this - The New York Times spent
weeks writing an article about how Wal-mart and Target learn your secrets and
then Forbes wrote a knock-off that stole a bunch of their traffic.
[http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-
art...](http://nickoneill.com/how-fortune-stole-a-new-york-times-article-and-
got-all-the-traffic-2012-02/)

This also reminds me that as much as possible we should try to link to the
original source on HackerNews, it's in the guidelines!
(<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>)

Back in July, I spent a lot of time putting together an infographic for
FeeFighters on the tech boom and bubble ([http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/tech-...](http://feefighters.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/tech-boom-bubble.jpg)). We got links back from tons of
magazines, including Forbes, Mashable, Fast Company, etc. Many of them didn't
link to either us or KissMetrics (our partner who did the design work), but
most complied after sending an email or tweet. One place, Bostinno - refused
to link to us at all, despite multiple tweets and emails to them, for some
reason deciding to credit Mashable: [http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-
a-tech-boom-or-bubb...](http://bostinno.com/2011/07/13/are-we-in-a-tech-boom-
or-bubble-lets-look-at-the-data-infographic/) Massholes.

~~~
ilamont
Former journalist here. Some years ago I attempted to create a standard called
"Source Blocks" (see [http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-
experiment....](http://www.ilamont.com/2008/11/my-new-journalism-
experiment.html) ). It's basically a paragraph of explanatory text that the
author places at the end of the article, identifying what sources he/she used
in the course of researching the article. It looked something like this.

 _Sources cited, referenced, or consulted: Blog.basturea.com, American
Journalism Review (ajr.org), Editorsweblog.org,
Glasshouse.waggeneredstrom.com, Techmeme.com, thelongtail.com,
Washingtonpost.com, Wired_

The problem was, even without linking these sources, it took discipline to
keep a running list while work was being done, and/or time at the end of the
writing process to do the source block writeup. And the system did not account
for higher "weight" for certain sources, much less the details that came from
each source. It attracted a little attention, but I was only able to keep it
up for another year.

At the time, someone suggested creating some sort of browser extension to
track all of the sources, which might have helped a little with other websites
but would have been useless for phone or F2F interviews that occupy many
journalists' time.

~~~
spc476
It's not hard. Firefox under Unix has an interesting property. When you select
text, you end up with the following targets for an X Window select operation:

    
    
        TIMESTAMP
        TARGETS
        MULTIPLE
        text/html
        text/_moz_htmlcontext
        text/_moz_htmlinfo
        UTF8_STRING
        COMPOUND_TEXT
        TEXT
        STRING
        text/x-moz-url-priv
    

With this, I was able to add an extension to my editor to obtain the URL, pull
the page, pull the title and generate an HTML BLOCKQUOTE with proper CITE
attribute with the highlighted text included.

~~~
chris_wot
Please share!!!

------
saket123
ohh my..reading Zee's tweets <https://twitter.com/#!/Zee> ..Amazing how little
this guy cares about this. He basically tried to bully his way out of this
before coming up with a meek apology. I will try to stay clear of TNW from
now.

------
BiWinning
omg you got plagarized? omg on the internetz?? omg serialz???

It's the internet shit for brains. Lemme ask you: Ever downloaded a torrent?
Ever hotlinked an image?

The content you wrote sits on a web page, written in html and served with the
http protocol. Anyone can save your webpage as file on their desktop, copy it,
put it in a torrent, whatever.

Getting plagiarized sucks but man up and understand the game you're playing
here though you could argue that you do know the game by bitching about it on
hacker news and reddit, that's a good place to bitch about such things, the
girls here like to get worked about this kinda shit.

------
Xuzz
."--'v

~~~
pocketdial
bfro21jg309..............

------
MisterMerkin
I find it really hard to care about this. I'm amazed other people here seem to
be up this in arms about it.

------
johnfoo
<http://drawsomethingnaughty.com/100262>

------
zeedotme
Zee from TNW again.

There's been some confusion.

Will post a follow up to this shortly to explain the mix up...but basically
this HN commenter nails it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3972875>

~~~
citricsquid
So you (tnw) posted the article without attribution, the original author sees
this, he tweets about it and asks wtf and then you (tnw) fix it and then you
(personally) go on a tirade about how it's how the industry works blah blah
blah conveniently ignoring that he knew it was originally not attributed and
you reply as if it was, now you're admitting that you did in fact post it
without attribution? All you had to do was apologise when he complained to
you. You were in the wrong, whether it was an accident or not isn't the issue.

------
tomasien
This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him. I
know this is an insanely simple comment that will lead people to think I
didn't read this conversation or really think about this topic, but I did. And
it's not. The internet is ridiculous sometimes.

~~~
jacquesm
> This isn't plagiarism. It's laughable to say that it was, they cited him

Yes, it is. What you see now is not how this started, there has been a lot of
editing to change the situation to look different than it was initially.

