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

1: George Lucas Loses U.K. ‘Star Wars’ Copyright Case

First off today, Andrew Ainsworth, a London-based prop designer who first created the iconic “stormtrooper” helmet for the first Star Wars movie, has won a legal battle against the movie’s director, George Lucas, that will allow him to continue to sell copies of the helmets made from the original mold. The Supreme Court upheld a 2009 Appeals Court ruling that said the helmets were costumes, not sculptures, and thus were not protected by copyright law. However, the court also ruled that Ainsworth had violated copyright law in the U.S, thus barring him from exporting his helmets here. Ainsworth, however, had already stopped shipping to the U.S. after losing a similar court case in the U.S.

2: News Aggregator Loses Online Copyright Appeal

Next up today, UK news aggregator Meltwater lost its appeal against the Newspaper Licensing Authority (NLA) which said that, as a distributor of aggregation software, its end users must get licenses from the NLA or respective publishers to use their content. This lawsuit began in September 2009 after the NLA introduced a licensing scheme that made such a requirement and, though 22 aggregators and 280 companies signed on, Meltwater did not and opted instead to litigate.

3: French Downloaders Face Government Grilling

Finally today, ten alleged file sharers are being called before HADOPI, the organization overseeing the nation’s three strikes system, to explain their actions. The users each have been the subject of three reports of copyright infringement via their Internet connection and are not being asked to explain their actions. HADOPI, if the user doesn’t show or doesn’t provide a compelling explanation, may take the matter before a judge who can issue a fine of up to 1,500 euros or diconnect them from the Web for a period of a month. Some say that conviction may be difficult as HADOPI only has their IP address but the group says that they have additional proof in that the users received the second warning letter and took no other action.

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 6 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, today that changes as myself and CopyByte were featured in a recent article in the Gambit Weekly, a local free weekly newspaper that is well-known for its “Best of New Orleans” series as well as doing an increasing amount of investigative journalism.

The article deals with a case of suspected plagiarism from Jim Brown, a former state insurance commissioner who writes a syndicated column in which the reporter has found many suspicious passages. I reviewed some of those passages and offered input into the case for the article.

All in all, the case is an interesting one and now that I’m able to review the full picture a bit better it’s a good case study for other journalists and authors about the state of plagiarism in traditional journalism.

This is definitely a story that anyone who is interesting in plagiarism should be looking at regardless.

(Note: I’ve already emailed the author to submit a correction for the name of the business being “CopyByte” and not “Copybytes”.)

In the end, I want to thank author Kevin Allman for reaching out to me and including me in the column as well as the Gambit Weekly for addressing the issue.

If anyone else is wishing to contact me for a news story or other interview, please feel free to either reach out to me via my contact form or via my press page.

The article takes a look at the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defense Minister who has had his Doctorate revoked and may lose his job over allegations he plagiarized his dissertation. The article compares attitudes toward plagiarism in Germany to those in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The article, which appeared in the international edition, was written by D.D. Guttenplan and does a great job looking at many of the intricacies and complexities surrounding plagiarism, especially on the global scene. It’s a great article and one well worth reading.

On that note though, a big thanks goes to Mr. Guttenplan for including me in the article and for taking such an in-depth look at this very thorny subject, and one many newspapers and reporters shy away from…

1: Class Action vs. Record Labels Over Peer-to-Peer Suits Hanging Bby a Thread

First off today, the lawsuit Andersen v. Atlantic Recording Corp, which saw a wrongly accused file sharer attempt to start a class action suit against the record labels for their legal practices seems to be circling the drain. Though Andersen won a $103,175 judgement for attorney’s fees, she attempted to counter sue. However, that countersuit is running into problems as the judge has already granted a summary judgement in favor of the labels on the issue of wrongful investigation and has denied the suit class action status, making it unlikely to move forward. An amended petition for class status is expected soon.

2: Reading Post Wins Landmark Copyright Battle

Next up today, British newspaper the Reading Post won a copyright battle with a photographer whose images were used in the paper without permission. The images, which were of graffiti and vandals in abandoned buildings, were given to the paper by the police hoping that their printing would generate leads. The court tossed out the photographer’s suit, refusing to enforce the copyright of the work on the grounds it “incites or encourages” others to act in a way that is “immoral, scandalous or contrary to family life.”

3: Census of Files Available via BitTorrent

Finally today, Sauhard Sahi, a Princeton senior, decided to perform a census of bittorrent files to see what kinds of content was being shared. He found that, based on his sample of 1021 works, that some 99% of the files were likely infringing. Though the results are somewhat mitigated by the fact he was looking at files shared, not downloaded, and could not determine the legality of every work effectively, it is an interesting glimpse at what is being swapped on the file sharing network.

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 Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

It was once again another big week for copyright news as Chris and I struggle to condense it all down into a bite-sized one-hour podcast for your listening pleasure.

All in all, there were eighteen stories this week including news from all over the copyright world including our “Weird Story of the Week”.

This week’s stories include:

• DVR as a Service Gets Reprieve
• Plagiarizing Newspaper Gets Shut Down
• Italy Blocks The Pirate Bay
• The Record Industry Explores New Models
• Bavarian Mayor Gets Caught Plagiarizing
• And Many more…

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

Show Notes

According to Rosen, he was tipped off of a likely plagiarism of his work by Mark Williams, a writer for The Bulletin, a small weekly newspaper from Montgomery County in Texas.

Unable to contact the author of the story, Rosen contacted the publisher of The Bulletin, Mike Ladyman, who promised to look into the matter. However, Rosen kept digging and, after going through some of Williams’ articles over the past few years, discovered over a dozen other cases of likely plagiarism.

Rosen contacted Ladyman a second time with this news, but Ladyman brushed it off, saying that the matter was being handled. Then, contact was dropped and Ladyman failed to respond to multiple emails or calls. Concerned that The Bulletin might not exist, he obtained a copy from the area’s daily newspaper and analyzed the articles in it, finding that everything in the paper, quite literally, was a likely plagiarism.

However, it wasn’t until the story was posted on Slate a few days ago that things got very interesting. The issue exploded across the Internet, resulting in the closure of The Bulletin’s Web site.

But, in a strange twist, it was the author’s words at the end of the article that have garnered much of the press and the most controversy. It is strange to think that, though the author believes this may be, statistically, greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism, it is his viewpoints on how this relates to the Web that have caused the most stir in some circles.

Controversial Words

It was at the end of the article, when Rosen stopped telling the story and started reflecting upon what happened that he said the following:

But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend—or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.

This likening of well-respected blogs to a plagiarist newspaper has angered many. One blogger called it curmudgeonly, another hinted that linking was the antidote to plagiarism in journalism and still another called the quote a “Throwaway line in a story about an actual plagiarism case.”

Rosen, for his part, has said that the quote was intended to be “ironic” and was supposed to be a joke. However, joke or not, the quote has cast a shadow on the rest of the article in many of the conversations around the Web, something that is unfortunate considering the work and attention to detail that went into the rather stunning findings in the article itself.

Sympathy for the Author

Personally, I find it very hard to attack Rosen. Not only do I believe the quote was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but I found myself in a similar situation over two years ago with my article “The ‘New’ Plagiarism“.

In that case, I had attempted to write an article about a controversial perspective on blockquotting. The result was that many misunderstood the article as me expressing my own viewpoints, something that was not the case.

Still, the article hit the front page of Slashdot and I took quite a beating over it for several weeks. However, I blame myself for it. Not only was both the article and the headline poorly written, but I never clearly explained what I was trying to do. I can fault no one for walking away with the wrong impression.

In the end, I took my licks, learned my lesson and moved on. Today, that article would never appear on this site.

The discovery that Rosen has made is that people do not like being accused of plagiarism, even jokingly. Many bloggers follow the example of the blogs he mentions and some took it personally when he connected them with a plagiarist.

Many might consider this negative since it has taken much of the light off of the very real and very disconcerting actions of The Bulletin, but I think of it as a positive sign. After all, it shows clearly that, despite many claiming the contrary, there is still a very high value placed on original thought and on giving proper credit.

We may be in a remix culture, but clearly bloggers, on the whole, still value creativity and original authorship.

Conclusions

For me, the bottom line is simple. Currently, there is a very big plagiarism scandal in the world of print and online journalism, one where questions are not being answered and the accused seems to be determined to cover up what happened.

This needs to be addressed and dealt with quickly, my hope is that, with the pressure on The Bulletin for answers, they will eventually be forced to explain what exactly took place.

However, it appears that a misfire of a joke from the author of the report has dampened and distracted from what can be adequately described as some of the best plagiarism investigation performed in some time.

It was a foolish quip that had no place in that article, but now it risks becoming the headline to the story.

Hopefully, that joke can be put aside and the real headline can be allowed to shine more brightly. But even if it isn’t, I still think something valuable was learned.

Perhaps, in the end, the lesson runs a bit deeper than the fact there was a weekly paper in Texas with a lot of likely plagiarisms. Perhaps it can teach us something about our modern culture and what we value as an artistic and journalistic community.