However, in terms of content and copyright issues, the White House site is almost a polar opposite to the challenges that others face. Where most Webmasters have to find a way to balance the rights they want to give away vs. the ones they are willing to surrender, most of the content on the White House site is already in the public domain, by virtue of it being created by the U.S. Government.

That surrendering of rights is furthered even more by Obama’s promises to run a more open administration and present a “Google” government, something his site would likely represent.

But even though the site is far from a finished product (it is only a few days old), many of its policies are already in place. Though it is likely too early to really grade how “open” the Obama WhiteHouse.gov site is, we can still get an idea of some of the steps that his Web team is taking to ensure that it is as “Google-Friendly” as possible.

Here’s what I found.

The Copyright Policy

Obama’s Web site follows protocol of most of the Web and has a “Copyright Information” link in the footer of the site. The copyright policy is very short and sweet, first clarifying that all work produced for the site is in the public domain, including what that means, and then informing users that anything they submit to the site is licensed under a CC-BY license, making it available for reuse with attribution for any purpose.

The second part of the license is a very brief DMCA policy that, as the law requires, informs users that they respect the intellectual property of others and will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. Though it is unclear how that applies with this site, it meets the requirements of the law as I understand them.

Overall, I am very impressed with this policy. Not only does it plainly state that the work of the site is in the public domain and offers a clear, practical explanation of what that means, but the site also goes to great lengths to ensure that works by others posted to the site can be used freely as well, with only the minimal restriction of attribution.

The only issues I have with the copyright policy are that A) The policy does not actively link to the CC license in question, making it difficult for those unfamiliar with the license to read the terms of it and B) The DMCA information does not provide the contact to report any infringements. Though the latter does not strike me as urgent at this time (I can’t imagine what content one would file a notice over), it does seem an odd omission.

Current Grade: B+

The Robots.txt File

The new robots.txt file of the new White House site has already drawn a great deal of attention. It is a simple and beautiful file that allows search engines to index the entire site, save a folder entitled “includes”, which likely contains elements used to compile the site. Restricting search access to this folder makes sense as all data from it will be in other pages and, thus, allowing access would have created duplicate content.

If you’re gunning for openness and free access, it is hard to imagine a more perfect robots.txt file.

Current Grade: A+

RSS Feeds

RSS is going to be an important part of any “wide open” and “Web-friendly” government site, however, this is one area the new White House site disappoints. Though the home page offers a collection of five RSS feeds you can subscribe to, only a few of them worked in my testing and all of the ones that do are heavily truncated, displaying only the first sentence of the post.

Both the AP and Reuters allow more of their content to appear in their RSS feeds.

In defense of the new site, it may be a limitation of the software they are using as their blog main page is also heavily truncated. This could be something they work on in the future. Also, one still has to give the site team credit for making RSS feeds such a critical part of their Web strategy and including so many of them.

That being said, I can imagine many were disappointed to subscribe to the blog feed at the White House and discover that it was a very partial feed.

Current Grade: C-

Video

I was surprised to find that the video on the site is hosted by YouTube and all of the videos can both be embedded freely into other sites and downloaded in high resolution format. The White House even has its own YouTube channel, currently with only three videos.

All in all, it is an impressive effort to both make the content available freely and to put it where people already are, rather than hiding it on sites people rarely go to.

Current Grade: A

Feedback and Comments

Though not directly a part of the openness of the site, two-way communication or at least a chance for visitors to talk back to the site is an important part of transparency for many bloggers. Unfortunately, the current White House site does not allow comments on its blog at this time.

However, one can hardly fault the Web team for that. If you read the comments on the YouTube videos, you’ll quickly see why they might want to prevent users from commenting publicly.

Unfortunately though, even the site’s email contact form seems needlessly limited. It asks for, though doesn’t require, a great deal of personal information, including phone and address, and then limits the action email to a mere 500 characters, roughly the length of 3.5 Twitter tweets.

Though, again, it is hard to fault the administration for not wanting to open up their inbox to every person with a long-winded rant, Dominos Pizza gives you 1000 characters when filing a complaint.

Current Grade: C

Overall Average

Though it’s tough to give an overall average as the elements above can not and should not be weighed equally, the feeling I get is that the administration, so far, has earned a solid B+. There is room for improvement, but the work has been very solid over all and I am very impressed with the progress that has been made.

Final Thoughts

No matter what you may think of Obama’s political views, it is clear that his administration has taken some great steps to be more Web-friendly and be more open onlne. Not only does its Web presence offer an easily-searchable site with a solid copyright policy, but it is working to share its multimedia content broadly and put it where it can be found.

Though there are some weaknesses, namely with the RSS feeds and the contact forms, such hiccups should be expected so early into a site launch. The fact that it has come as far as it has in the short time that it has is very impressive.

The Obama administration is already well on its way to being the most Web-friendly in the short history of the Web. I really like what has been done so far but would like to see it improve and grow in the coming months.

A lot of good work has been done but there is still more to do if one truly wants the most open experience possible. Fortunately, I think we’ve seen more than enough “good faith” from the administration to assume that they are working to make that happen.

Needless to say, no matter what happens, the whole of the Web will be watching.

For the past few days, the Web has been very busy discussing the McCain plagiarism controversy and several people have asked me via both email and Twitter what I thought about it.

However, I am always inherently suspicious about plagiarism scandals in politics because, almost always, the people who are bringing the accusations have self-serving motives.

Also, as with the Obama case previously, there is a tendency to take things to an extreme, either declaring it a hideous injustice or mere vapor.

However, typically speaking, these types of scandals are never as simple as “Yes, he plagiarized” or “No, he didn’t”. The truth is almost always more complicated than that and, if you want my thoughts on the case, it is going to take a few moments to explain them.

What Supposedly Happened

According to Political Wire, a political blog founded by Taegan Goddard, a Wikipedia editor emailed the site to let them know he noticed some similarities between a recent McCain speech about the crisis in Georgia with Wikipedia’s article about the country.

Specifically, the article cites three comparisons that involve suspicious similarities.

Though the story has not garnered as much attention as the Obama scandal did earlier, Google News is only showing about 30 stories referencing both “McCain” and “Plagiarism” as of this writing, it’s gotten mentions on some late-night talk shows and seems to have become the subject of a lot of political humor.

However, the comparisons themselves are not exactly cut and dry cases of plagiarism. They are short passages that center on facts about the country that have very little verbatim copying.

The McCain scandal, like almost any non-cut-and-paste plagiarism case, is not simple nor can it be painted in broad strokes.

My Thoughts

Whenever I do a plagiarism analysis, either on cases such as this or for my consulting services, I have two standards that I follow.

1. The Academic One: Would I expect an average university or other school to be concerned with or discipline a student that turned in this work?
2. The Personal One: If the original work were my own, would I be considering taking legal or other action against the person that reused my content?

The second standard does not apply here. The accusations are more academic than legal in nature so there would be no reason for anyone to consider taking legal action.

So, with that in mind, we’ll use the first standard in this case and look at each quote separately.

Quotes provided by Political Wire.

Comparison 1

one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)

This one is impossible for me to say anything about. Both quotes deal with a known fact about the country of Georgia and information about this can be found in many places, including being alluded to in the CIA’s World Factbook.

Though it is always a good idea to cite your sources, we don’t expect politicians to do so in their speeches so, without any verbatim copying, there seems to be little to this quote.

Comparison 2

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

The strongest of the quotes in terms of evidence of plagiarism, there is still not a great deal of verbatim copying. Once again, all of the information is well-known facts about the country of Georgia available from a variety of sources.

The last sentence of the quote is the most interesting, especially the inclusion of the phrase “economic crises”, which is a fairly unique way of saying “economic troubles” or “financial problems”. However, it is not so uncommon that it could not have been a coincidence.

There are a lot of similarities between the two passages but, since most of both quotes are pure facts, it is hard to separate the information from the expression.

Comparison 3

In 2003, Shevardnadze (who won reelection in 2000) was deposed by the Rose Revolution, after Georgian opposition and international monitors asserted that the 2 November parliamentary elections were marred by fraud. The revolution was led by Mikheil Saakashvili, Zurab Zhvania and Nino Burjanadze, former members and leaders of Shavarnadze’s ruling party. Mikheil Saakashvili was elected as President of Georgia in 2004. Following the Rose Revolution, a series of reforms was launched to strengthen the country’s military and economic capabilities. (Wikipedia)

vs.

Following fraudulent parliamentary elections in 2003, a peaceful, democratic revolution took place, led by the U.S.-educated lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili. The Rose Revolution changed things dramatically and, following his election, President Saakashvili embarked on a series of wide-ranging and successful reforms. (McCain)

This, even by the blog’s estimation, is the weakest of the three quotes. There are very few similarities, the order has been changed and the two quotes focus on different things.

Once again though, we are dealing with facts and information, not expression, that could have come from almost anywhere. Since we don’t expect political candidates to add footnotes to their speeches, it seems unfair to accuse McCain of plagiarism in this quote.

Wrapping Up

If we take this plagiarism out of the context of a political speech and put it in a proper student paper with footnotes, I doubt anyone would have raise an eyebrow. While it is true that McCain has not offered any attribution at all, something that might have cleared this matter up much sooner, most political candidates don’t.

Though I admit openly there are similarities, the truth is that the level of copying would probably not warrant suspicion in an academic environment, especially if the sources were properly cited.

To be fair, I was not able to perform some of my standard tests, including using automated plagiarism detection tools, as the quotes involved were too short for such tools to be effective.

This is just a personal opinion based upon my own reading.

Conclusions

The entire matter could have been avoided completely, most likely, if McCain and his staff had just provided proper footnotes for his speeches.

Politically, it makes sense anyway. Politicians routinely throw out fact and ideas that we, as voters, have no idea where they got them from. We have no clue if our future leaders are using reliable sources or are listening to smart people.

If politicians and other public figures wanted to better serve us, as well as avoid these kinds of scandals in the future, they would provide such footnotes for everything they offer publicly. Whether it was a speech, a report or anything else meant for us to consume.

Though most people likely wouldn’t care to trudge through a mess of footnotes, those who are interested would likely do a good job letting the rest of us know when something is amiss.

Though some are already providing valuable fact checking of politicians, there is clearly a need for more and a need for politicians to assist with the process.

The faster we all get to the truth, the better off we’ll all be.

That, of course, is just part of it. We have more news from Europe, a lawsuit that the RIAA itself may be facing and even a few zombies (pictured left) to keep things lively.

Remember, as usual, this week’s linkroll is a “raw” link list. Some stories are duplicated, some do not point to their original sources and some may not be accurate. A great deal of refining goes into producing the show notes for the Copyright 2.0 Show.