Copying and pasting, referenced or not

[David H. Barrett]

Hi, all

I know I'm supposed to search and not repeat earlier posts and all that stuff, but frankly, when I started looking into this issue I got bogged, really quickly.

In short, I have two simple questions:

1. Is it breaching copyright to copy and paste material from another website (e.g. one run by an organisation such as the WTO) and not rewrite it? My understanding would be that this is not good practice (a euphemism for "total theft of someone else's work"), even if the source is acknowledged in a reference or elsewhere in the entry.

2. If I find an instance of this, should I:

    a.) edit the item to change the wording and avoid hassles?
    b.) report the incident to someone (and if so, whom)?
    c.) tuck my head under my armpit, whistle a merry tune and forget the whole thing ever happened?

Any and all advice sincerely welcomed!

[Howard C. Berkowitz]

Hi, all

I know I'm supposed to search and not repeat earlier posts and all that stuff, but frankly, when I started looking into this issue I got bogged, really quickly.

In short, I have two simple questions:

1. Is it breaching copyright to copy and paste material from another website (e.g. one run by an organisation such as the WTO) and not rewrite it? My understanding would be that this is not good practice (a euphemism for "total theft of someone else's work"), even if the source is acknowledged in a reference or elsewhere in the entry.

2. If I find an instance of this, should I:

    a.) edit the item to change the wording and avoid hassles?
    b.) report the incident to someone (and if so, whom)?
    c.) tuck my head under my armpit, whistle a merry tune and forget the whole thing ever happened?

Any and all advice sincerely welcomed!

The definitive answer is, "it depends".  I can't speak to the WTO, but I can speak to recent experience with material from the International Convention for the Safety of Lives at Sea (SOLAS), from the International Maritime Organization (IMO). When I find that the material is hard to read without paraphrasing, I next ask: will paraphrasing change the meaning, especially in treaty language? Further, is there any particularly natural way to paraphrase the materials? For example, I'm reasonably certain, without looking at the text, that the SOLAS states that it applies to all vessels carrying passengers, and all cargo vessels of 300 gross tons or greater. How could I paraphrase that? Say cargo first and passengers second?

When I take material, even including things I wrote myself, from technical specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force -- which are not copyrighted -- I paraphrase when I know that something is written in a manner specific to the type of document. For example, there might be (and probably is) the statement "The Designated Router MUST send an acknowledgement before timer T1 expires. It MAY send an acknowledgement for several received messages as long as it can be done before T1 expires".

In IETF documents, MUST and MAY are written in all caps, and have a very specific meaning spelled out in a reference document. MUST means mandatory; MAY means optional. I don't assume that is obvious to a first-time reader of the material. Incidentally, the IETF conventions on all caps, I find, make the conditional statements much easier to read, once one is experienced with the style.

[Jitse Niesen]

1. Is it breaching copyright to copy and paste material from another website (e.g. one run by an organisation such as the WTO) and not rewrite it? My understanding would be that this is not good practice (a euphemism for "total theft of someone else's work"), even if the source is acknowledged in a reference or elsewhere in the entry.

Usually it is, but there are some exceptions. If it's only a short sentence and there is no natural way to rewrite it, then it's okay. If it's more than that, then it's plagiarism (which in academic circles is considered a more serious offence than mere total theft) unless the source is acknowledged and quotation marks are used. It's often also a breach of copyright, unless the author has allowed copying (as we do, under certain conditions; this might also be the case for WTO, check the source) or the text is quoted in order to comment on it, or various other things.

Laws, treaties and specifications are another matter, commented on above.

2. If I find an instance of this, should I:

    a.) edit the item to change the wording and avoid hassles?
    b.) report the incident to someone (and if so, whom)?
    c.) tuck my head under my armpit, whistle a merry tune and forget the whole thing ever happened?

You should definitely do something. If you're not sure, I would first contact the author. If the author doesn't reply, if you don't agree with the reply, or if you're sure it's a breach of copyright or plagiarism, contact the constabulary (see [[CZ:Constabulary]] and use the email address listed at the top) and let them handle it. Not everybody knows about this and some simply need to be educated.

If it's found that the text is okay, then that resolves the matter. If not, it will be deleted. Usually, it's best to start from scratch instead of just changing the wording.

I'm afraid your question is too general to give an easy reply, so let me end with a one-sentence piece of advice: the easiest (for you) plan of action that I'd consider acceptable in all situations I can think of is to contact the Constabulary and forget about it.

[David H. Barrett]

Thanks for the advice, Howard and Jitse! It's much appreciated, and I'll carry it with me!

[David H. Barrett]

Further to this issue, I've since been trawling (NOT trolling!) through random articles on the site, tidying up the odd error or stylistic inconsistency if I find it. Sometimes, if I think there's some sort of information gap, I search for additional information on Google and try to add a little bit from a reputable source. As a result of doing that, I recently discovered an article that had been brought over from Wikipedia (as I've subsequently discovered), and then more or less dropped here and left alone.

The porting from Wikipedia thing I get, but this article had another major problem. While looking for some information to fill what I considered a gap in the article, I found chunks of the original article from which it had been ... shall we say, borrowed, on an encyclopedic website (not WP) that I shan't name because I don't want to draw unnecessary fire from the natives.

Additional information had been added, but basically the bulk of the article was a copy and paste. I've since reworded it (more or less paraphrasing, tidying up grammar and spelling, adding the odd additional bit of information and trimming some fat), but the issue still remains that this is a major problem for us at CZ.

First, how, if at all, is this policed? Second, is it policed on an ongoing basis, or merely ad hoc? Third, if it is detected, how is it dealt with?

It would take two seconds flat for something like this to blast a major chunk out of CZ's credibility. And we all know from the WP experience how difficult that credibility is to regain.

[Chris Day]

Such an example as you describe above should probably be deleted and started from scratch. I think this is one of the main reasons why this project dumped the wikipedia fork idea very early on. Starting with a clean slate will bring us new ideas and a unique character. I think one of the main reasons that borrowing from wikipedia is encouraged to some extent is that Citizendium contributors have also written article at Wikipedia.  It is natural that one does not want to start from scratch under such circumstances.

[Aleta Curry]

I think Jitse's reply « Reply #2 on: August 16, 2008, 01:19:12 PM »  needs to be incorporated in a policy statement somewhere.