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Author Topic: Plagiarism?  (Read 870 times)
dree12 (OP)
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July 27, 2013, 09:39:59 PM
 #1

Does bitcoinexaminer.org engage in plagiarism? I ask because they have a "via: xxx" link below every post, and certain sentences seem very similar. I've found no exact match with a copyrighted source, but an (uncredited) exact match with a non-copyrighted source. This isn't plagiarism by itself, but it indicates laziness and possibly more plagiarism that hasn't been uncovered.
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pedrog
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July 27, 2013, 10:18:47 PM
 #2

The articles are rewritten, so I guess not... But they say exactly the same thing as the source articles...

dree12 (OP)
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July 27, 2013, 10:39:42 PM
 #3

The articles are rewritten, so I guess not... But they say exactly the same thing as the source articles...

I'm sure there's plagiarism in there somewhere. They incorporate public domain text in this post:

Quote
Little information was released about the MyBitcoin theft. However, many argue that Tom Williams ran it as a scam (and was not a theft per se). In terms of both US dollars and Bitcoins, this was by far the largest theft.

The magnitude of the attack served as a reminder to the Bitcoin community to stop trusting new exchanges without identification.

After Bitscalper shut down without returning the users’ funds, BitcoinTalk user MiningBuddy attempted to reform Bitscalper using the remnants of the engine. However, no success was found and the coins could not be returned.

(about half the post is copied verbatim)

I wrote this and licensed it under a permissive license, which allows this usage. However, the license information was buried halfway in a long thread (this has now been fixed), so I doubt they read it. What concerns me is that around half the article wasn't written by them—no attempt was even made to paraphrase it. The other text in the article was sarcastic and lively, whereas the text they copied had a distinctively different tone. This is a giant red flag, and I would not be surprised if they used material that was not licensed so permissively in the same way.

From another post:
Quote
A Namecoin like system was first described in 2010

This is really short, but copied verbatim from Wikipedia (and I highly doubt the same guy wrote both). It is then followed by poor grammar and incoherent rambling.

Quote
and although it was created to be a cryptocurrency, today it’s mainly used as a decentralized DNS. Namecoin “...”, it’s possible to read here.

The sharp relief in the quality of the prose is evident.

I have a strong feeling there is much, much more.
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 12:02:58 AM
 #4

Well, if it's public domain it's free for use...

If your text was copied and you gave permission to use like this, then it's fine...

The other exemples of small portions, that seems fair use.

If the texts aren't copy letter by letter, they aren't "flagged" by search engines as duplicated content, so, no big deal...

And do you really care about this?

If you do, and those texts were copied from websites that you control, you can file a DMCA on Google and get the articles deindexed...

dree12 (OP)
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July 28, 2013, 12:23:19 AM
 #5

Well, if it's public domain it's free for use...

If your text was copied and you gave permission to use like this, then it's fine...

The other exemples of small portions, that seems fair use.

If the texts aren't copy letter by letter, they aren't "flagged" by search engines as duplicated content, so, no big deal...

And do you really care about this?

If you do, and those texts were copied from websites that you control, you can file a DMCA on Google and get the articles deindexed...

I don't care about my text; I actually encourage its use. That's why the Licence is near the top of the text. I believe in open-source, and thus give permission to copy the work in any situation and without credit.

What I'm concerned about is they way they used it: verbatim and followed by a completely different style. It's clear they just copy it and add rambling so Google can't detect it. This type of use points to a problem with laziness. And this type of use means they likely plagiarize others that have less liberal licences.

In addition, I've found clear plagiarism right here:

Quote
Bitcoin still constitutes less than 1 percent of the business, according to the co-founder Christian Dumontet, but the amount of crypto-payments keeps growing with an average of 9 BTC deposited in Foodler accounts each day.

The original is here:

Quote
with an average of 9 BTC deposited in Foodler accounts each day. Bitcoin still constitutes less than 1 percent of the company’s payments, though.

Reordering the sentence does not excuse you from plagiarism and copyright infringement. This activity is illegal. I am contacting CoinDesk about this. Bitcoin Examiner is breaking the law. This activity should not go unpunished.
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 12:52:58 AM
 #6

Actually I follow that website, and what you're saying is true.

The articles are simply rewritten or rearranged from other sources, but at least she has the cortesy of including a link back. Smiley

dree12 (OP)
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July 28, 2013, 01:00:57 AM
 #7

Actually I follow that website, and what you're saying is true.

The articles are simply rewritten or rearranged from other sources, but at least she has the cortesy of including a link back. Smiley

This is not legal. The responsible way of doing this would be to copy the text with little modification and state clearly that the text is copied. What she is doing is taking text and changing it up so it doesn't appear plagiarized. Maybe her readers don't mind, but I'm sure CoinDesk is not happy about this.

Remember that these websites need to pay their writers, and they only get revenue if people read articles on their website. If their writers' work is simply copied, with no more than a "link back", then there is a problem. CoinDesk is losing money because of this.

Note that the website also copied Wikipedia. Wikipedia's license requires attribution, i.e. the text must be stated to be from Wikipedia. This has not been done.
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 01:52:03 AM
 #8

Actually I follow that website, and what you're saying is true.

The articles are simply rewritten or rearranged from other sources, but at least she has the cortesy of including a link back. Smiley

This is not legal. The responsible way of doing this would be to copy the text with little modification and state clearly that the text is copied. What she is doing is taking text and changing it up so it doesn't appear plagiarized. Maybe her readers don't mind, but I'm sure CoinDesk is not happy about this.

Remember that these websites need to pay their writers, and they only get revenue if people read articles on their website. If their writers' work is simply copied, with no more than a "link back", then there is a problem. CoinDesk is losing money because of this.

Note that the website also copied Wikipedia. Wikipedia's license requires attribution, i.e. the text must be stated to be from Wikipedia. This has not been done.

What you're saying is true, but no one cares...

If it isn't damaging CoinDesk's search engine rankings, well, it is probably helping by linking back, why should they lose time with that?

Wikipedia is copied like a zillion times a day, Google knows the original source, why should they care?

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July 28, 2013, 01:58:42 AM
 #9

Actually I follow that website, and what you're saying is true.

The articles are simply rewritten or rearranged from other sources, but at least she has the cortesy of including a link back. Smiley

This is not legal. The responsible way of doing this would be to copy the text with little modification and state clearly that the text is copied. What she is doing is taking text and changing it up so it doesn't appear plagiarized. Maybe her readers don't mind, but I'm sure CoinDesk is not happy about this.

Remember that these websites need to pay their writers, and they only get revenue if people read articles on their website. If their writers' work is simply copied, with no more than a "link back", then there is a problem. CoinDesk is losing money because of this.

Note that the website also copied Wikipedia. Wikipedia's license requires attribution, i.e. the text must be stated to be from Wikipedia. This has not been done.

What you're saying is true, but no one cares...

If it isn't damaging CoinDesk's search engine rankings, well, it is probably helping by linking back, why should they lose time with that?

Wikipedia is copied like a zillion times a day, Google knows the original source, why should they care?

And herein lies the problem. Let's say you spent a lot of time writing an article. You expect to earn 1 BTC from that article due to advertising revenue or other sources. Now, someone copies your work almost word for word. Let's say someone's searching for foodler platform bitcoin... and your text comes up, but on a different website. Luckily, there's a link back... in tiny text that nobody will click, as they have already read the article. Now, you look at your coffers, and see only 0.5 BTC. Ouch.

Plagiarism is serious.
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 02:43:27 AM
 #10

And herein lies the problem. Let's say you spent a lot of time writing an article. You expect to earn 1 BTC from that article due to advertising revenue or other sources. Now, someone copies your work almost word for word. Let's say someone's searching for foodler platform bitcoin... and your text comes up, but on a different website. Luckily, there's a link back... in tiny text that nobody will click, as they have already read the article. Now, you look at your coffers, and see only 0.5 BTC. Ouch.

Plagiarism is serious.

I know it's just an example, but "foodler platform bitcoin" has 0 searches.

I make a living as a webmaster, basically I write for profit, and I do the technical stuff also, I do this exclusively since 2009 or so, what you're saying doesn't really work like that, it is really hard to put a number like that on a particular article, but that doesn't matter...

I know some webmasters and bloggers that are obsessed with plagiarism, I really don't know why they lose so much time with that, it doesn't bring any profit, at least RIAA sue people and gain some money with that... In this business, if you are searching for people who copied your content, that means, you're not writing, not improving websites layout, not improving SEO, not learning new things, not optimizing ads, meaning, you are not doing any of the stuff that brings you money!

Sure you can pay some service that checks that for you like Copyscape, and just another bill to pay...

If your content isn't being scraped by some autoblog, you're fine!

And you do sound like RIAA.

Piracy is serious! Kanye West couldn't afford a 3 shark tank, he had to buy a 2 shark tank because of piracy!

dree12 (OP)
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July 28, 2013, 02:59:27 AM
 #11

And herein lies the problem. Let's say you spent a lot of time writing an article. You expect to earn 1 BTC from that article due to advertising revenue or other sources. Now, someone copies your work almost word for word. Let's say someone's searching for foodler platform bitcoin... and your text comes up, but on a different website. Luckily, there's a link back... in tiny text that nobody will click, as they have already read the article. Now, you look at your coffers, and see only 0.5 BTC. Ouch.

Plagiarism is serious.

I know it's just an example, but "foodler platform bitcoin" has 0 searches.

I make a living as a webmaster, basically I write for profit, and I do the technical stuff also, I do this exclusively since 2009 or so, what you're saying doesn't really work like that, it is really hard to put a number like that on a particular article, but that doesn't matter...

I know some webmasters and bloggers that are obsessed with plagiarism, I really don't know why they lose so much time with that, it doesn't bring any profit, at least RIAA sue people and gain some money with that... In this business, if you are searching for people who copied your content, that means, you're not writing, not improving websites layout, not improving SEO, not learning new things, not optimizing ads, meaning, you are not doing any of the stuff that brings you money!

Sure you can pay some service that checks that for you like Copyscape, and just another bill to pay...

If your content isn't being scraped by some autoblog, you're fine!

And you do sound like RIAA.

Piracy is serious! Kanye West couldn't afford a 3 shark tank, he had to buy a 2 shark tank because of piracy!

The folks at CoinDesk won't share that opinion, because they're not Kanye West. They need whatever profit they can get. In fact, I venture to guess the site is operating a loss right now. You probably have no idea what it's like when you spend hours working on a website that's leaking money—and then discover some lazy person did no work, copied your text, and is stealing your visitors.

I license most of my text permissively because I do not expect to profit from the text. I provide it as a service to the community, and so encourage others to pass on the knowledge. But this is not the case for hard-working Bitcoin enthusiasts running an alternative medium. It's simply unfair for plagiarists to earn money off people who actually do work.
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 03:10:56 AM
 #12

And herein lies the problem. Let's say you spent a lot of time writing an article. You expect to earn 1 BTC from that article due to advertising revenue or other sources. Now, someone copies your work almost word for word. Let's say someone's searching for foodler platform bitcoin... and your text comes up, but on a different website. Luckily, there's a link back... in tiny text that nobody will click, as they have already read the article. Now, you look at your coffers, and see only 0.5 BTC. Ouch.

Plagiarism is serious.

I know it's just an example, but "foodler platform bitcoin" has 0 searches.

I make a living as a webmaster, basically I write for profit, and I do the technical stuff also, I do this exclusively since 2009 or so, what you're saying doesn't really work like that, it is really hard to put a number like that on a particular article, but that doesn't matter...

I know some webmasters and bloggers that are obsessed with plagiarism, I really don't know why they lose so much time with that, it doesn't bring any profit, at least RIAA sue people and gain some money with that... In this business, if you are searching for people who copied your content, that means, you're not writing, not improving websites layout, not improving SEO, not learning new things, not optimizing ads, meaning, you are not doing any of the stuff that brings you money!

Sure you can pay some service that checks that for you like Copyscape, and just another bill to pay...

If your content isn't being scraped by some autoblog, you're fine!

And you do sound like RIAA.

Piracy is serious! Kanye West couldn't afford a 3 shark tank, he had to buy a 2 shark tank because of piracy!

The folks at CoinDesk won't share that opinion, because they're not Kanye West. They need whatever profit they can get. In fact, I venture to guess the site is operating a loss right now. You probably have no idea what it's like when you spend hours working on a website that's leaking money—and then discover some lazy person did no work, copied your text, and is stealing your visitors.

I license most of my text permissively because I do not expect to profit from the text. I provide it as a service to the community, and so encourage others to pass on the knowledge. But this is not the case for hard-working Bitcoin enthusiasts running an alternative medium. It's simply unfair for plagiarists to earn money off people who actually do work.

Of course it is operating at a loss, they don't monetize the site!

And I've explained that it doesn't really work like that, Google knows who the source is, sure you can fool the search engine, but that is quite hard work, and eventually will stop working and your site will get penalized hard!

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July 28, 2013, 03:19:18 AM
 #13

Piracy is serious! Kanye West couldn't afford a 3 shark tank, he had to buy a 2 shark tank because of piracy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM8PT1eAvY
Quote
Don't take away money
From artists just like me
How else can I afford another solid gold Hum V
And diamond studded swimming pools
These things don't grow on trees
So all I ask is everybody Please

[Chorus]
Don't Download This Song (Don't do it No No)
Even Lars Urlich Know it's wrong (You could just ask him)
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should (You Really Should)
Oh Don't Download This Song
pedrog
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July 28, 2013, 03:31:58 AM
 #14

Piracy is serious! Kanye West couldn't afford a 3 shark tank, he had to buy a 2 shark tank because of piracy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGM8PT1eAvY
Quote
Don't take away money
From artists just like me
How else can I afford another solid gold Hum V
And diamond studded swimming pools
These things don't grow on trees
So all I ask is everybody Please

[Chorus]
Don't Download This Song (Don't do it No No)
Even Lars Urlich Know it's wrong (You could just ask him)
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should (You Really Should)
Oh Don't Download This Song

Haha, this is great!

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