Conference Board Admits Plagiarism, Pulls Copyright Report 60
An anonymous reader writes "The Conference Board of Canada has withdrawn
all three reports on intellectual property after allegations this week by Michael Geist of plagiarism. The organization now admits that its report on copyright was plagiarized from US copyright lobby groups."
hyperbole time (Score:2)
Re:LMAO (Score:5, Interesting)
And pure irony on the part of the article!
I, for one, will mention this incident whenever the topic moves to copyright infringement. They lost the moral high ground too, now.
Re:LMAO (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LMAO (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the first time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Copyright [wikipedia.org]
I love the double standard: when we do it, we're filthy thieving pirates, if they do it, it's "just an oversight".
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Internal Review FTW!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Had these reports been subject to "Internal Review", they never would have been released. What they really meant to say was: "We look like money grabbing hypocritical lobby group puppets and need to do some damage control before our reputation is permanently scarred." Yeah... thats what they *really* meant to say. I work at a company where all externally released documents are subject to internal review. That means that before the document can be released, at least 2 other people are required to review the document and sign off on it before it is released. The author and reviewers names are on the cover, and their signatures are captured and stored in a tracking system to show that they approved the documents. *Thats* an internal review process. To say that the Conf. Board of Canada did an internal review? Thats utterly laughable.
Good work Mr. Geist for spotting this and stepping on it very early.
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Good luck with that.
Original English Text:
The Stranger (1942), by Albert Camus, is one of the most famous French novels of the twentieth century and is among the most notable literary expositions of the absurdity of human existence in an indifferent universe. Philosophically, it is an existential novel, despite Camus not considering himself an existentialist.
Translated to French:
L'étranger (1942), par Albert Camus, est l'un des romans franÃais les plus célÃbres du 20Ãme
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Sorry, I wasn't dismissing the idea, it was more of a joke showing the wonders of Altavista Babelfish, that cannot even reverse its own translations properly. Anyway, it does seem to me that using these tools would create nearly as much, if not more, work than just paraphrasing the paper yourself.
Canada has a blacklist? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Canada has a blacklist? (Score:5, Informative)
But Canada does not have fair use, but instead fair dealing which is a lot less liberal than the USA's fair use.
Re:Canada has a blacklist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but due to the law of unintended consequences, Canada has incredibly liberal copyright laws thanks to earlier lobbying efforts by the music and movie industries.
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Due to the record companies getting a levy on blank CDs, we have audio private copying, which indeed through the "law of unintended consequences" allows Canadians to make private copies of music, but that is a right that has been paid for.
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" ... This article seems a little bias when you consider how much more liberal Canadian laws are ... i.e. we don't have a DMCA. ..."
Canada has both more and less restrictive copyright law than the US does; that it is "liberal" is simply spin by the usual suspects, which would come as no surprise to anyone following the modern copyright debate.
Regarding the DMCA, although it's somewhat strange to say "we don't have a [law enacted by a foreign government]" since sovereign nations always pass their own laws, v
Conferance..? What's that? (Score:2, Funny)
What this doesn't say... (Score:3, Informative)
Do as I say..... (Score:2, Insightful)
I've decided to post the entire report here. (Score:2)
Oh wait. I can't because of copyright. Man, this made so much more sense when there were printing presses.
not much to say (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, am speechless....maybe they should have been too.....
I just feel sorry (Score:2)
for the poor chickens that had to work overtime to lay all those eggs!
Seriously??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously Conference Board of Canada, seriously? Did they think that people wouldn't check up on this??
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Personally, I think the Board should be taken to court over this, they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and while I don't agree with the copyright laws necessarily, I think that if they are there, they should be followed, especially by the people who support it. If the people who are supposed to be the supporters of
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The GPL uses copyright only insofar as it subverts the copyright system against itself.
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Not true at all. The GPL depends on copyright law to put severe restrictions on what you can do with GPL'd code. That is very different than what the situation would be if there was no copyright, i.e. "subverting" the copyright system.
Your description might be applicable to licenses like the BSD license, if you squint hard, and almost but not quite, the LGPL, but definitely not the GPL.
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But the BSD has no effect whatsoever on the copyright system, since all that's really required from someone who reuses code from a BSD project is a copy of the copyright notice inside the new source code. Meanwhile, reusing code from a GPL project means that you cannot publish your new program under traditional copyright protection.
I'm not saying the GPL is better -- after all, I published FlacSquisher [sourceforge.net] under the Apache license. If copyright somehow ceased to exist, the GPL wouldn't exist either, but only be
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Note that proprietary code almost NEVER relies on copyright. It simply isn't released. If copyright didn't exist, there would be little to no effect on commercial code at all.
The GPL attacks proprietary i.e. closed source software, i.e. trade secrets, using copyright. It has little to no effect on copyright itself, and certainly doesn't subvert it.
You just don't get it do you? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between hating what some people do with a concept and the actual concept itself.
The one on copyright and intellectual property is as divided a perspective as abortion.
At issue is the different groups interpretation of what they should be allowed to do with a commodity.
One sells it and thinks that they should be allowed to control how their product is used once sold.
The other thinks that it has purchased a product and since they now own it, they should be able to do anything with it that
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Even though the GPL depends on it...
And you really probably thought you got a gotcha! moment with this but you clearly don't understand that if the day comes where copyright no longer exists there would be no need for the GPL and as such it wouldn't matter that the GPL depends on copyright or not.
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Oh, but there's a flip side to not having copyright: Nothing stops anyone from taking what you've done, obfuscating it, encrypting it, tying it to a platform, and releasing it as if it were their own.
Oh, and they'll throw chairs at you if you try pointing out that they're doing it.
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Oh, but there's a flip side to not having copyright: Nothing stops anyone from taking what you've done, obfuscating it, encrypting it,
One can already do that with GPL code now and make it hard for anyone to spot.
tying it to a platform,
What does copyright have to do with whether something is cross-platform or not?
and releasing it as if it were their own.
A number of people have done that anyway regardless of the existence of copyright or not. I expect many of them probably haven't and won't be noticed for doing so.
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My entire post was pointing at a specific company's [microsoft.com] tactics.
Re:Too bad they weren't the PirateBay (Score:5, Informative)
Well, no, they couldn't. Plagiarism is taking someone else's original work, either in whole or in part, and purporting that it is your own original work. A small example of this is using an attributed quote in a paper and not identifying it as a quote.
A large example is copying your entire paper from someone else, putting your name on it, and submitting it as yours.
Note that plagiarism with permission is still plagiarism. If your friend gives you his term paper from last year and you turn it in as yours, that's still plagiarism. If you do it without permission, it may also be a copyright violation.
Crime and Punishment (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok... the title above is obviously lifted, but it comes very handy and no longer under copyright protection, hopefully.
Let's see then the story here:
1) US copyright groups want to send people to jail in the US and around the world for downloading music, etc. for their own listening, viewing, etc. pleasure.
2) Conference Board of Canada was downloading documents from US copyright lobby groups, lifted them partially into a paid, for profit report to support the Canadian government to formulate laws, reflecting the interests of US copyright lobby groups.
3) How about feeding the US lobby groups recommended medicine to Conference Board of Canada as a test? Suing the hell out of the Conference Board of Canada? Demanding jail term for the head of the organization?
4) How about commissioning a report, on how US copyright lobby groups are influencing or directly rig the legislation process in other countries?
Conference Boards of Canada? (Score:2)
Admitting plagiarism?
Wasn't it exactly them who said that music had the right to children?
np: Autechre - Teartear (Amber)
Prestige (Score:2)
Letter to Conference Board of Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Under their retraction [conferenceboard.ca] they provide a contact link. I clicked on that link and gave them my thoughts as pasted below, and the acknowledgement promises a response. Will get back to you on upon their reply.
Dear Sir/Madam,
After almost selling out Canada to the USA via your plagiarized reports on intellectual property, I would strongly suggest that you contract Prof. Michael Geist or at least work closely with him in the next effort. Michael is well know, extremely knowledgeable on the subject, and trusted by a large number of Canadians. Only in this way will you regain the prestige you once had.
Sincerely,
...
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That's an excellent letter to them.
I'm going send the same one word-for-word, I think it'll help get the point across!
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Might want to proofread it first... /grammar nazi
(hint: it's missing an 'N' somewhere)
RE: The Conference Board of Canada (Score:2)
Dear Hulk,
SMASH!
Regards,
DarthVain
The Conference Board of Canada is a lobby group. (Score:1, Informative)
This really shouldn't be much of a surprise. Check out the people involved in their conference on Intellectual Property they are having tomorrow in Toronto.
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/conf/09-0120/brochure.aspx [conferenceboard.ca]
The president of the CRIA is the chair of the conference for crying out loud.
Where's the dismissal? (Score:2)
The Conference Board of Canada is really just a private company that claims to be independent and not to represent industry interests (it says so right on their about us page). If they really mean that then they must also know that in academia plagiarism is a crime, and the punishment is dismissal and black listing. I look forward to hearing that the senior people responsible for this report have been fired.
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This is really bad. In tomorrows conference [conferenceboard.ca] to be presented by the Conference Board of Canada, we see who two of their sponsors are:
"The Conference Board of Canada would like to acknowledge the contribution of the following individuals and organizations in the development of this conference:"
Graham Henderson
President
Canadian Recording
Industry Association
Wendy Noss
Executive Director
Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association
Tomorrows conference is all about Intellectual Property Rights. They state:
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I love the spin. From their "About Us" page:
(2) Objective and non-partisan. We do not lobby for specific interests.
(3) Funded exclusively through the fees we charge for services to the private and public sectors.
(7) Independent from, but affiliated with, The Conference Board, Inc. of New York, which serves nearly 2,000 companies in 60 nations and has offices in Brussels and Hong Kong.
Grover says, which of these three does not belong? (hint: it's the first one)
Now that's irony (Score:2)
Creative Commons (Score:2)
The ironic thing about this is if they had used some sort of copyleft license on the original lobbying material, this kind of sharing wouldn't have been an issue :]