Jody Rosen's recently
Slate piece,
Dude, You Stole My Article, has sparked renewed the debate in the blogosphere about plagiarism, fair use and the
link economy.
Rosen recently chronicled the discovery that one of her articles had been plagiarized (four paragraphs nearly verbatim) in a small alt-weekly,
The Bulletin, published outside of Houston, Texas. It turns out Rosen's
Jimmy Buffet article was just the beginning - as Rosen dug through the Bulletin's archives, she quickly realized most, if not all of the articles, were mosaics of stolen prose, lifted from
Slate,
USA Today,
The Dallas Observer,
Rolling Stone, the
Boston Globe, and more.
Although the
Bulletin seems a clear cut case - "the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism" writes Rosen - more often, bloggers and journalists are at odds when "Fair Use" borders on abuse.
Tammi Marcoullier of
Publishing 2.0, recently wrote about having quotes lifted from her article without attribution, during her tenure as a
Washington Post blogger.
Nick Carr has been widely
criticized for not including links in a recent
Atlantic article, by critics who argue that mentioning an author or source (without a URL) isn't sufficient when a hyperlink is so easy. And it seems the
AP controversy over Fair Use, which had the self-righteous of the blogosphere so enraged, has only just subsided.
So how can journalists and bloggers play "fair"?
ePluribus Media recommends the following:
-Summarize the article and attribute it to its original source, including title, date, publication, author and URL
-If you need to quote from an article and you're unsure if your use constitutes as Fair Use, contact the copyright owner and simply ask permission. For example, for the AP:
E-mail: apdigital@ap.org
Fax: +1-212-621-5488.
-If you are unable to find contact information for the copywright holder, post a disclaimer, citing "fair use" under Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 with your contact information
-Last, if a copyright holder asks you to remove material, do so in a considerate and timely manner. If you don't? The copyright holder may contact the ISP the offending material is hosted by and the entire site can be disabled.
Sources:
Publishing 2.0,
Slate,
ePluribus Media
