Academic plagiarism is a challenge to educators as the expanding use of online sources has facilitated intentional and unintentional copying. The only remedy is to root out its cause, not just deal with its symptoms. Plagiarism actually begins in the fast, distracted way that students—middle school to graduate school—read from screens.

Although catching and punishing offenders has been the approach most schools use to contain plagiarism’s proliferation, the real solution lies in teaching students to read slowly and deliberately from electronic sources as they have learned to read from paper.

Fast, Distracted Reading

Screen readers read fast and distractedly, scrolling and clicking rather than slowly reading, annotating, and reflecting on the text.

Pop-up windows, flashing ads, hyperlinks, sidebar menu advertisements are designed to point the reader’s attention rapidly away from the text to the ads from which websites and search engines make their profits.

Electronic textbooks, even if not connected to the Internet, divert attempts at in-depth reading to a picture, a video, another page, or a definition.

Some diversions only appear to enhance comprehension. For example, clicking a link to a definition doesn’t develop vocabulary from context, but merely teaches students they don’t ever have to learn the word, just click. Whether useful supplements to reading or unnecessary distractions, these diversions interrupt the learning process and the habit of focused reading.

When A Word Is Not a Word

We assume that reading words on a clay tablet, a scroll, a page of a paper book or on a screen is the same because a word is a word. However, our eyes move differently reading on paper than on screens. Jakob Nielson’s research that tracked eye movements found that paper readers follow an E pattern: they move across the first line of text and sequentially across every line to the bottom of the page.

The eyes of screen readers follow an F pattern: they read the first line, part of the next, then skim and scroll to the bottom of the page or click a link.

Nielson further found that 84% of screen readers process words and sentences out of sequence and read only 18% of the text. This fragmented reading results in little comprehension of the material students must understand, synthesize, organize around emerging patterns of ideas, and explain in their own words and voice. Lacking this understanding, they are compelled to copy.

According to brain researcher Maryanne Wolf in Proust and the Squid, the brain does not just read differently, but it thinks differently depending on the medium. Paper reading activates deep white cells where long-term memory and feelings reside; electronic reading over-activates surface grey brain cells, which seek immediacy and efficiency and where decoding takes place.

For screen readers, the milliseconds that the brain needs to access long-term memory for learning to occur is instead used to reroute attention to decoding or skimming information superficially.

After the first five hours of screen reading, the neural structure of the brain changes permanently and that changed brain wants only to skim and decode. The reading brain that wants to understand the text, and not plagiarize, must be retaught the skills of deep, fluent reading—annotation, rereading, and reflection—after those initial five hours of screen reading.

The Challenge of Complex Text

Fast, distracted screen readers expect information to appear in small chunks, nicely diced and prepared for them. They seek short, simplistic ideas and multiple-choice kinds of answers to complex questions; they want information explained and reduced to the simplest ideas as quickly as possible.

With these expectations nurtured by electronic reading, complex text—whether a modern novel like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a scholarly journal like Nature or Science, a legal document, or a logical argument—becomes an impossible challenge because screen readers’ minimal experience with complex text has left them unprepared.

Diploma to Nowhere (PDF) reported that of the 3 million freshmen entering college in 2008, 43% at 2-year public colleges and 29% at 4-year public colleges were unable to do complex college assignments. The National Endowment of Arts (PDF) reports that 55% of high school students spent 1 hour or less reading or studying for class, and 56% read 1 hour or less for leisure. Once in college, during the school year 74% of college freshmen and 80% of college seniors read 0-4 unassigned books related to course work, their major, or leisure reading.

Students with minimal reading experience are less prepared for reading the complex material required for doing academic research. Using their skills at finding fragmented information from their non-sequential reading have made students expert at information retrieval, not knowledge formation. With little understanding of the information they find, they copy, slightly edit whole passages with ellipses and synonyms, sometimes without attribution, and feel absolved of any plagiarism.

What Works

The solution to plagiarism is slow, deliberate reading that invests students in their research. Students need to be taught to reflect on small sections of text, write notes in their own words and voice, connect to what they already know, ask questions—all the paper reading strategies that encourage the brain to use those milliseconds to go from decoding to accessing long-term memory and learning.

Functioning like intellectual training wheels, research management software that forces students to employ the strategies of slow, reflective reading and careful note taking, can prevent plagiarism. With a stake in their reading, thinking, recording, and writing processes, students of all ages would no longer feel the need, or the desire, to plagiarize.

Biography

Dorothy Mikuska (B.A. in English, Loyola University; M.A. in English, Northwestern University; and C.A.S. in Educational Leadership and Supervision, National Lewis University) taught high school English including the research paper for 37 years. After retirement she formed a company, ePen&Inc, and created PaperToolsPro, software for students to employ the literacy skills of slow, reflective reading needed to write good research papers. She has spoken at conferences such as The International Conference on the Book (St. Gallen, Switzerland), National Conference of Teachers of English, Illinois Association of Teachers of English, Illinois School Media Association, and Illinois Computer Educators. She currently blogs at The English Teacher’s Notes Blog.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Oracle’s Android Lawsuit Against Google Goes to Jury for Patent Decision

First off today, Dan Levine of Reuters reports that the patent portion of the Oracle/Google case is now before the jury. The case, in which Oracle claims the search giant violated their patents and copyrights when developing the version of JAVA for use in the Android mobile operating system, was broken into copyright and patent portions, with the copyright portions concluding last week. In the copyright portion, the jury ruled that Google had infringed but was divide don the issue of fair use. There is no word on when a verdict in the patent portion is due.

2: Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy

Next up today, Enigmax at Torrentfreak writes that The Pirate Bay is reportedly under a denial of service attack that has all but shuttered the site over the past 24 hours. Though the perpetrator of the attack is unknown, the site was recently critical of members of Anonymous who were launching a similar attack against the UK ISP Virgin Media. Anonymous was attacking Virgin Media for blocking The Pirate Bay following a court order in the country. The site has been down for nearly 24 hours and is only reliably accessible through proxies of the site itself.

3: New Education Minister Appointed After Previous 2 Quit Amid Allegations of Plagiarism

Finally today, the Associated Press reports that Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta has apointed Liviu Pop as the new Education Minister in the nation. However, the position seems to have been somewhat cursed recently as Pop’s two predecessors both quit after allegations of plagiarism and incompetence were raised against them. The most recent, Ioan Mang, resigned yesterday after researchers from Japan, Israel and Taiwan accused him of copying academic work. Ponta has said that the attacks are politically motivated and he vowed to get to the bottom of them.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

However, in addition to individuals having different views on plagiarism, different industries and even fields of study have diverging views as well. A novelist, for example, faces a different standard of plagiarism than an attorney, which is different than a physics researcher.

The thorniest cases of plagiarism are ones where world’s collide. Where people from two different fields cross paths on a plagiarism issue and the plagiarizer feels that they did nothing unethical but the alleged victim feels slighted.

That at least appears to have been part of the problem in a recent dispute between blogger and designer Joshua Gross and tech blog The Next Web. However, even though that case seems to be largely resolved, it points to a much bigger problem that, from anecdotal evidence I’m seeing, seems to be growing.

The Joshua Gross/The Next Web Case

Yesterday, Gross posted an article on his blog about how new buttons on electronic displays in New York City taxis had managed to increase tipping drastically. Later that day, The Next Web posted its own take on the story.

However, Gross took exception to the way the new post was handled. Though it did provide attribution to Gross, the attribution was buried in the story and it seemed that much of the text from TNW version of the story was taken either verbatim or only loosely rewritten, all without nay quotes or direct references to where the content came from.

According to his blog, Gross approached TNW about the article saying in a tweet, “If you guys wanted to use my article, you should have asked. Copping (sic) the content and barely rewriting it is so lame.”

This prompted a response from Zee M Kane, the CEO of TNW, saying in one tweet (of several) that, “We couldn’t have made it any clearer that you were the source for the story.” He also went on to say that, “Facts are facts and we included them.”

This prompted Gross to post about the allegations and the story quickly gained traction online, in particularl with Hacker News. Shortly thereafter, Kane revisited the case and posted an apology as a Google Doc.

In the apology, Zee said that it was a matter of poor timing, that he never saw the improperly attributed version and that he responded out of anger without all of the facts. However, he did add, “I do think quoting the original post might have been a better option. However, Harrison Weber (our author) decided to paraphrase and clearly didn’t do a particularly good job. I don’t however think that it warrants an all out ‘plagiarism’ attack.”

However, the new apology doesn’t seem to have done much to placate the angry mob, which includes Matt Finkel, who refers to it as a “Lolpology”. Another poster, writing under the name Fruchtose, found that the posts was over 70% similar if you discard the intro in the article on TNW.

What’s clear is that there’s a lot of difference between what some of the people involved consider plagiarism and the others. However, these are the types of debates that are becoming much more common and are only likely to grow in terms of intensity and frequency.

The Bigger Picture

When it comes to plagiarism, Gross, who is a designer and artist by trade (though he works heavily with websites and technology), certainly comes from a different world than Kane, whose passion lies with technology. Though the two seem to agree that the first version of the article was not properly attributed, it’s also easy to see why there might be differing opinions. As I said above, different industries have different needs when it comes to originality and, as such, different demands when it comes to plagiarism.

In my experiences with the tech community, the understanding of plagiarism in the academic/journalism/creative sense is lacking in many of today’s entrepreneurs. Though Kane seems to have realized what was going on, I can think of many others that will find no fault with what TNW did in this case.

In many of my conversations with technologists and tech entrepreneurs, they were interested almost solely in the legal side of the coin, wanting to do as much with the content of others as the law will allow. Unfortunately, in matters of plagiarism and copyright, ethics often covers much more ground and, as this case shows, can be of equal importance.

However, many take the viewpoint that, if it’s not illegal, it’s not unethical. This is eerily similar to one of Kane’s comments that said “facts are facts”, hinting (accurately) that facts are not copyrightable. Therefore, according to the logic of many, they are fair game.

Copyright doesn’t cover facts, the actual work put into a piece, the idea behind it and many other components of an article. In fact, all copyright DOES cover is the expression of the idea. But if you were to take ideas, facts, work, from another without attribution in an academic environment, it would be a case of plagiarism and the same holds true in many other areas as well.

The Web industry, however, has sprung up so fast and evolved so quickly, that a solid standard of ethics around plagiarism has not formed. There’s a strong obsession with what the law says, but little invested in determining what is moral.

This has created a serious problem that, sadly, is not likely to go away any time soon.

Bottom Line

To be clear, this is not to say that most or all technologists have poor morals and ethics when it comes to plagiarism. If anything, the backlash on Hacker News, which is run by Y Combinator, shows that many take these issues very seriously.

It is, instead, to say that the Internet industry does have the same standards as other industries on these matters and, even worse, doesn’t truly have a unified stance at all. The Web has a history of pushing boundaries legally on what one can do with the work of another without much thought to the ethics, something that has to start changing and evolving.

In short, there’s been a great deal of focus on what one CAN do and not what one SHOULD do.

Regarding the Gross/TNW case, it seems as if this one is at least on track to be resolved amicably. The article on TNW has been modified to clearly indicate the quoted text and Kane admitted he handled the situation badly.

However, this won’t be the last case of its kind and if the Web hopes to avoid these types of situations becoming epidemic, it’s time to think about the moral and the law side-by-side rather than as separate entities.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Oracle Trial Will Continue Into Damages Phase

First off today, Sam Varghese at ITWire writes that the judge in the Google/Oracle case has ruled that the trial will enter into the third phase, the damages phase, after the patent portion is complete. Oracle had asked the judge to postpone the final phase until after a retrial on the copyright claims had been held but that request was denied. The case began when Oracle sued Google claiming that the search giant had infringed their copyrights and patents when they developed their version of JAVA for the Android mobile operating system. The judge split the trial into two parts, one for the copyright issues and one for the patent issues, but, while the jury was able to rule Google had infringed on Oracle’s work, it was deadlocked on the issue of fair use. Closing arguments in the patent portion are scheduled to begin today.

2: Pirate Bay Founder Takes Case to European Court

Next up today, The Local reports that Pirate Bay founder Fredrik Neij will be appealing his recent criminal conviction to the European Court of Human rights. Neij, along with three others involved in The Pirate Bay, were convicted in Sweden and lost a later appeal. However, when the four appealed the Sweden’s highest court, the court refused to hear the case. At least one other defendant, Peter Sunde, is asking for a pardon due to health and work reasons but Neij has opted to appeal to the EU court in hopes of having his conviction overturned.

3: Open WiFi Owner Not Liable For Illegal File-Sharing, Court Rules

Finally today, Enigmax at Torrentfreak writes that, in Finland, a District Court has ruled that merely having an open wifi does not mean that you are liable for copyright infringement that takes place through it. The case centered around a woman who was identified after her connection was determined to have downloaded content illegally online. However, the time the download occurred coincided with an event at her place with some 100 guests. The court ruled that merely having an open wifi does not make you liable for infringement others do through it and that there was no evidence that the defendant was directly involved.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

It is Friday Monday again and that means that it is time for another episode of the Copyright 2.0 Show.

It was a busy week for copyright news as we have an important, if ambiguous, jury ruling in the Google/Oracle case. We also have the return of Perfect 10 to the show as it sues Tumblr over allegedly ignoring DMCA notices and one of the first copyright termination cases is ruled on, in favor of the artist.

Please note though that, due to some technical difficulties with the recording, the audio in this episode is of much lower quality than what you are likely used to. I had to rip the audio from the actual Spreecast recording rather than from my board due to an error with my audio recorder. I’m in the process of addressing this and we should be back to full strength next week.

I’m sorry for the poor quality audio.

This week’s stories include:

• Google/Oracle Jury Rules on Infringement, Split on Fair use
• Perfect 10 Sues Tumblr Over Pornographic Images
• Village People Frontman Wins Copyright Termination Case
• CBS Threatens ABC Over “Big Brother” Knockoff
• Beastie Boys Sued for Copyright Infringement (At a Very Bad Time)
• Gloves Come Off in Google Book Search Case

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed.

Show Notes

About the Hosts

Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey (@plagiarismtoday) is the Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today (Hint: You’re there now) and works as a copyright and plagiarism consultant. Though not an attorney, he has resolved over 700 cases of plagiarism involving his own work and has helped countless others protect their work and develop strategies for making their content work as hard as possible toward their goals.

Patrick O’Keefe

Patrick O’Keefe (@iFroggy) is the owner of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He’s the author of the book “Managing Online Forums,” a practical guide to managing online communities and social spaces. He maintains a blog about online community management at ManagingCommunities.com and a personal blog at patrickokeefe.com.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Judge Rules Largely for GSU in Copyright Case

First off today, Bill Rankin of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Georgie State University has largely won its case against various publishers, including Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and SAGE Publications, over its electronic lending program. The judge in the case ruled that some 69 of 74 alleged infringements by the university qualified for fair use. The system at GSU allows professors to share excerpts of textbooks with students electronically, however, in the five cases where infringement was found, professors had shared whole chapters and not just short excerpts. This case has been widely watched by other colleges hoping to get guidance on fair use in an educational setting.

2: Megaupload Files Motion to Delay Civil Suit

Next up today, Jeremy Kirk at Computerworld writes that Megaupload has filed a motion in its civil case to delay the case from proceeding. In March the company was sued by Microhits and Valcom, two smaller content owners, for alleged copyright infringement of their content. However, Megaupload had been seized and shuttered in January of that year after a raid resulted in the arrest of many of the company’s employees, including its founder Kim Dotcom. Megaupload said in its filing that having the civil and the criminal case unfold in parallel could result in an unfair burden on their criminal defense.

3: Russian Innovators Pursue Prototype to Prevent Piracy

Finally today, Elena Shipilova at Russia Beyond the Headlines reports that Pirate Pay, a small company from Russia, claims that it has found a way to disrupt Bittorrent swarms and prevent illegal downloads from taking place. Though the company keeps the method behind its product a secret, it claims that it disrupted and prevented some 44,000 downloads of the Russian film “Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m Alive”. THe company is seeking to raise capital to do further development and, in the meantime, reportedly charges between $12,000 and $50,000 to mount a defense.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: EMI Says Bankruptcy Won’t Protect MP3tunes from Copyright Suit

First off today, Greg Sandoval at CNet reports that MP3Tunes, a music storage service that let users access and stream songs via the Web, has declared bankruptcy. However, the music label EMI has said that the filing will not affect their ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit and they are skeptical of MP3Tunes’ claim that it was the lawsuit that put them out of business. The lawsuit was filed in 2007 when EMI accused MP3Tunes of encouraging copyright infringement by letting users load songs into their lockers from unauthroized sources via Sideload.com. EMI sued both MP3Tunes and the company’s founder, Michael Robertson, who was named in the case personally.

2: TV Broadcasters Warn of Huge Industry Shakeup If Barry Diller’s Aereo Isn’t Stopped

Next up today, Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter writes that representatives for the major television networks have banded together and told a Federal Court judge that the new TV streaming service Aereo would be very disruptive to their own models for delivering content. Aereo, which works by having consumers “rent” a small antenna to capture over the air broadcasts and stream them to users via the Web. According to the TV networks, if Aereo is allowed to continue, cable providers could use the same system to avoid paying for broadcasts of TV networks.

3: German Celebs Fire at Pirates Over Copyright

Finally today, The Local in Germany reports that some 100 artists and celebrities have signed a letter attacking the local Pirate Party and the other political parties that have sided with them. The letter, which will be published in the weekend paper Die Zeit decries efforts to weaken copyright on the Web, saying that copyright is a “historically won civil right”. The Pirate Party has one several victories in local elections and seems to be making inroads on a national level as well.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

In a recent whitepaper posted to its site, Turnitin reported on the findings of its study and laid out what the educators said along with some analysis of their own.

The results were not shocking, but still provided a great deal of insight into both how educators view and treat plagiarism as well as what students are actually doing.

So what did the survey find? I’ve included some of the highlights below.

What the Survey Says

The survey first attempted to identify the different types of plagiarism that are common in academic settings Specifically they broke it apart into 10 categories, as defined below in the order of the type with the greatest intent to the lowest intent.

1. Clone: Verbatim copying without additions/subtractions.
2. CTRL+C: Largely verbatim copying from a single source with minor changes.
3. Find-Replace: Verbatim copying with key words/phrases changed, often automatically.
4. Remix: Paraphrasing content so that it flows seamlessly with other work.
5. Recycle: Plagiarizing from older works of your own, self plagiarism.
6. Hybrid: Combining correctly cited material with non-cited material in the same passage.
7. Mashup: A mix of copied and original content from various sources without attribution.
8. 404 Error: Including citations that do not exist or are inaccurate.
9. Aggregator: Properly cited material that contains little original content.
10. Re-Tweet: Includes proper citation but uses too much of the original wording, content that should have been quoted but was paraphrased.

The instructors were then asked to rate the various types of plagiarism in terms of both how often they see the plagiarism and how problematic it is (both in terms of discipline and effort required to locate).

The results were pretty straightforward. Clone plagiarism was the highest both on the problematic and the frequency scale, easily taking the highest score in both. Mashup plagiarism was nearly as common as Clone plagiarism but was ranked 3rd in terms of being problematic. CTRL+C, instead, was second in problematic and it was also third in frequency.

From there, both the frequency and the problematic numbers drop quickly. In terms of frequency, Remix, Recycle, Re-tweet, Find-Replace, Aggregator, 404 Error and Hybrid rounded up the list. In terms of problematic, Aggregator, Recycle, 404 Error, Find-Replace, Hybrid, Remix and Re-tweet finished out the list.

From this information, Turnitin wrapped up the report by making three recommendations for educators. Those are:

1. Intent Matters: Stating that the intent of the alleged plagairist matters and should be weighed when deciding what, if any, disciplinary action should be taken.
2. Guide Students: Help students avoid unintentional plagiarism and make them aware that professors know what is going on.
3. Use OriginalityCheck: Finally, they encouraged educators to give students access to their originality reports so they can see their mistakes and correct them.

All in all, the results and the recommendations probably won’t come as a surprise to many, but there is still a few things worth looking at deeper.

My Thoughts on the Survey

In general, as I said above, I didn’t find too much surprising. Clone plagiarism, as the survey calls it, is definitely both the most problematic and the most common. At the end of the day, most cases of plagiarism are still just matters of copy and paste.

The prevalence of “Mashup” plagiarism was interesting and shows that there a large number of students who are not simply copying and pasting what they take. This kind of plagiarism lends itself both to cheaters who are trying to circumvent plagiarism detection and students who simply don’t understand how and when to attribute the works they use. It can be very hard to tell the difference in these cases.

Also interesting was the prevalence of “Recycle” plagiarism (fifth on both lists) as it is thought by many to be a rare phenomenon for a student to simply reuse content they had created previously. This hints at the idea that many educators may want to get more creative with their assignments and focus on crafting tasks that are more plagiarism-resistant.

I also largely agreed with the conclusions of the whitepaper. I’ve written before that the way many schools take plagiarism as a one-size fits all discretion is hurting the fight against it,

Also, guiding students and bringing them into the plagiarism checking process are both common-sense ideas to reduce plagiarism, especially accidental plagiarism.

The only issue I have with the report is many of the names chosen for the types of plagiarism. While I know first hand the complexities in trying to distinguish between different types of plagiarism and explain those differences to others, some of the names seemed to be confusing.

For example “Clone” and “CTRL+C”, to mean mean the same thing since CTRL+C is the command to copy (exact words). Likewise “Mashup” and “Remix” mean similar things online though, in this study, they cover two very different types of plagiarism. Finally, I don’t know if “404 Error” and “Re-Tweet”, both of which are Web terms, are great analogies for the type of accusations (or would be widely understood by many educators).

However, that’s a very minor quibble in general as the break down of the actual types of plagiarism was still very good and the results very interesting and useful. For what was a very small survey, it answered some tough questions and got some very interesting data.

Bottom Line

In the end, the study didn’t have many surprises but the few it had were interesting and its breakdown does provide a good jumping-off point for future conversations about plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

In short, it’s an important survey and whitepaper for educators to look at and consider. As school lets out for the year and educators begin to prepare for the next semester, now’s a great time to reconsider the approaches schools take to plagiarism and if, maybe, their policies don’t mesh with the realities of what is going on.

Infograrphic

(click for full size)

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Optus to Fight TV Copyright Ruling

First off today, ABC News reports that, in Australia, cell service provider Optus has announced its plans to appeal a ruling against its TV Now service, which was shut down last month after another appeals court ruled against them. The case pits Optus against its competitor Telstra and various sports leagues in the nation. According to the leagues, TV Now, which lets users record over the air television to watch on their mobile devices, often with only a minute or two of delay, violates copyright in their matches. A lower court ruled in favor of Optus but the full bench ruled in favor of Telstra, forcing Optus to close the service. The says it will appeal the ruling, saying that it is the users, not them, making the recordings and that the service works just like a traditional DVR. Telstra, on the other hand, says the service threatens various exclusive deals it signed with the leagues to broadcast the matches digitally.

2: Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce

Next up today, David Kravets at Wired reports that the Federal bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the MPAA have unveiled the new anti-piracy warnings that will be displayed before DVDs and Blu-Rays purchased in the U.S. The warnings no feature logos from both the FBI and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as a second screen featuring a message from the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center). The logos are for use exclusive by licensed major motion picture studios, namely those in the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and unauthorized use may be punished. The warnings will be unskippable when played in a DVD player, causing many to wonder if the hassle may encourage piracy.

3: Man Sues Jaguars Over ‘Three-Point Stand’ Copyright Infringement

Finally today, Alfie Crow at Big Cat Country writes that a Jacksonville man is suing the Jacksonville Jaguars, the American football team, for copyright and patent infringement over a “3 Point Stand” used to hold a football up to practice kicking. The man claims to be the inventer of the stand and, in his three-page filing, provides proof with a photo of what appears to be a two-point stand. The lawsuit seeks “$5,000,000 million” in damages. More importantly though, the case serves as a word of caution that anyone can sue for anything at any time, including when it comes to copyright.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Have you ever wondered if the frequency of search engines crawling and indexing your website had any correlation to the number of visitors coming to your site? Or how about the opposite, do the number of visitors have any affect on search engines crawling your site? Does it even matter?

Working with client data

I was recently working with a client to help them better understand how good and bad web crawlers were impacting their website, when these questions came up. We looked at traffic from legitimate visitors, good web crawlers (search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and bad web crawlers, like web scrapers and data harvesters. What we found were a lot of broad patterns that didn’t move us any closer to answering “Does the frequency of search engine crawlers impact the volume of legitimate traffic?”

Side Note: JavaScript Required

It’s worth noting that most webmasters do not have visibility into good or bad web crawler activity on their sites. Have you ever wondered why Google’s web crawlers don’t show up on your Google Analytics reports? How about Yahoo’s, MSN’s, or Bings? The reason is, Google Analytics, along with a majority of other analytics tools, requires JavaScript in order to work properly. The problem is, most web crawlers, including search engines, do not use JavaScript and thus are never detected.

So back to the story. As we started digging into our client’s account data, we realized we needed to get more granular. Instead of looking at the monthly or weekly data trends, perhaps we needed to view the daily or even hourly trends. Below is a graph of one months data, broken out by day.

	Legitimate Visitors – Page Views
	Search Engine Crawlers – Page Views

Observations

24 Hour Lead Time

Based on this particular client, it appears that search engine crawler activity would spike approximately 24 hours before legitimate traffic would spike. Then towards the end of the month, it was almost like the search engines were trying to learn or predict traffic patterns, as the two spikes would occur on the same day.

Mid-week Activity

One point of interest was the level of consistency search engine crawlers had week over week. In the graph below, notice that each spike in search engine activity happens around the same mid-week point each week (Wednesday or Thursday).

Consistant Activity Month Over Month

For consistency sake, we checked across multiple months to see if these patterns remained the same or changed. Although we only have a few months of data for this particular client, the charts were almost identical each month. The search engine activity would precede traffic spikes by 24-48 hours until the end of the month when they would sync up again. Although the data is too small to be conclusive, it does appear that something resets each month

Breakdown by Hour

As we dissected the data even further, we broke it down by hour and over two days found the same patterns of search engine crawlers peak, preceding the peak of legitimate traffic. In the two graphs below (representing data from 4-18-12 and 4-19-12) the search engine crawlers occurred around 9 to 10 hours prior to the legitimate traffic peak.

	Legitimate Visitors – Page Views
	Search Engine Crawlers – Page Views

Figure 1: April 18, 2012 – Hourly Search Engine and Page View Data

	Legitimate Visitors – Page Views
	Search Engine Crawlers – Page Views

Figure 2: April 19, 2012 – Hourly Search Engine and Page View Data

Results/Conclusion

So have we answered any of our questions?

1. Is there a correlation between the frequency of search engines crawling your website and the number of visitors coming to your site?
2. Does it matter?

Based on the data from this one client, it would appear that there is a direct and consistent correlation between search engine crawlers and legitimate website visitors. However, our team has pointed out the data set is still too small to be conclusive. Perhaps this data simply shows us that search engines are quicker to respond to new content or events that eventually drive legitimate traffic to the site. In other words, if the search engines were never to crawl the site, there is a chance the spike in legitimate traffic would occur regardless.

Alternatively, we must also consider the possibility that increased search engine crawling has made new or relevant content easier for legitimate traffic to find.

We admit it is very interesting to see how consistent the search engines activity has been with this client and, given the potential correlation between search engine crawlers and legitimate traffic, there appears to be a case that webmasters might be able to drive more traffic to their website, by taking steps to increase search engine activity on their site.

Side note: Three Common Ways to Increase Google’s Crawler Activity

1. Create a free Google Webmasters account and upload the most recent XML version of your website sitemap.
2. Keep things fresh. Work to consistently add new content to your website to ensure the search engine crawlers find something new each time they access your site. Here’s a video from Google’s principal engineer of search engine quality, Matt Cutts, that speaks to the freshness of content.
3. Double and triple check to make sure every link on your website goes to a page that works. Make sure there are no errors… Search engine crawlers don’t like errors.

So does any of this matter? We do believe there is valuable insight to be gleaned from this analysis that can help webmasters, marketers, and business owners maximize legitimate traffic. At this point the data is more intended for observation and insight, versus making any concrete decisions or strategic changes. To provide more actionable analysis, our research team will continue to collect data on legitimate traffic, search engine web crawlers, and malicious web crawlers and content scrapers.

In the coming months, our research team intends write a follow-up analysis that factors in multiple industries, external events, and client activity that could also affect the frequency and total volume of traffic and crawlers.