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April 15, 2000

Copyright, Plagiarism, and the World Wide Web

Intellectual property is a big issue in the internet age, with the ability for people to publish for themselves, to grab nearly any file posted to the web, to use increasingly sophisticated electronic devices to repurpose data and information from one format to another. It is nearly impossible to keep track of all the content that is available on the internet, making it more and more difficult for authors and others to protect their rights.

This issue frequently comes to the fore in sites about television series, books, and movies, when owners of copyrights and trademarks attempt to crack down on infringement of their rights by fans. It is a legitimate concern, as there have been instances in the past where copyright and trademark have been so diluted by others' use that for all intents any individual rights to their use have been lost.

Copyright is a legal issue related to the specific expression of words or ideas, however, not about the words and ideas themselves. (Trademarks are slightly different, but we won't go into those here.) There's another, equally important intellectual property issue that doesn't always get enough press, particularly within fan circles, as it is primarily a moral or ethical problem, not a legal one.

That issue is plagiarism, in which someone appropriates another's words or ideas without properly attributing them. Sometimes, instances of plagiarism on the web are obvious, when someone lifts content directly from a site and includes it verbatim on their own without ever acknowledging the original source. (And in these cases, copyright infringement may occur in conjunction with the plagiarism.)

Other instances are more subtle, however, and generally involve the paraphrasing of site contents. Did you ever have to do a report as a young child and ended up copying huge chunks of the encylopedia for it? Perhaps you changed the words and their order a bit, but the key ideas remained the same. Paraphrasing without properly citing source is plagiarism, as it implies that the ideas are those of the person who appropriated the content rather than the original author.

For me, plagiarism is particularly painful when it occurs within the fan community, perhaps because I prefer the optimistic (idealistic?) view that we really are part of a community, looking out for one another because of our shared interest. Granted, many cases of plagiarism are unintentional, or at least are not intended to cause harm by unduly taking credit where credit is not due. But the effect is the same — someone else's hard work has, for all intents and purposes, been stolen.

Sometimes, all that is required is a gentle email to the owner of the site in question, asking that the material be removed or revised, or that a proper credit is given. Sometimes, however, the most flagrant examples of plagiarized sites very obviously have no contact information of any kind available, making it impossible for anyone to complain. Such sites are the ones that bother me the most, and hopefully bother the rest of the community as well.

So what can we all do to help avoid these problems? First, if you did not personally create something that you are posting on the internet, be sure that you give the source, include quotation marks if you are quoting exactly, and generally be aware of authors' rights. Second, take a little time to read up on copyright, plagiarism, and other issues of intellectual property in the internet age (see suggested resources below to get you started). And third, when in doubt about referencing or referring to someone else's content, take the time to ask permission.

If we all do our best to be good net citizens, we'll all be better off. Remember the Golden Rule — it just may be you on the other side of the fence some day, trying to protect your hard work.

-- Meli

Suggested Resources

The Book Nook

In the process of picking this month's books, I suddenly realized I'd left off two of my favorite novels. I was sure I'd added these two before, but apparently not. So better late than never — two terrific novels, both seminal works of science fiction in my opinion.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (April 2001)

The tale of Ender Wiggin, a bright young boy bred and trained to be a military genius in preparation for an alien attack, is an amazingly fast read, with plenty of twists and turns, that is well on its way to becoming a classic of science fiction (the Nebula and Hugo awards won't hurt either).

Tor Books / ISBN 0812589041
The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (April 2001)

Though written in the 70s, the author successfully predicted the explosion of the information age, addessing through several intriguing characters the risks we could face from 'information overload' and our depersonalization into bits and bytes of data that we may not even have access to ourselves.

Out of Print / ISBN 0000000000