Who exactly is ripping off whom? - Part 2
08/13/2008 @ 9:00 pm
As a follow up to the questions about plagiarism that we raised in our post here, I received a reply from James, who runs Japan Probe.
James is currently on vacation and he tells us that he wrote the article in question on August 9th, and put it into an auto post queue to go up while he was gone. He tells us he had never heard of Otaku International before, and that he plans to contact them “about the content they stole” when he gets back from his trip.
I still have not heard anything from Otaku International.
How did Otaku get a copy? Yes, the dates don’t mean anything but one had to post before the other. Isn’t there a way to tell which posted first?
August 14th, 2008 at 12:01 amThe piece in question has been removed from the site. Obviously they’re hoping this will all just go away, but I don’t think it should be that simple. Now is the time for month-long apologies, Mainichi-style!
August 15th, 2008 at 8:22 am“Isn’t there a way to tell which posted first?”
Unless you actively ’scrape’ and log the results simultaneously, it is a matter of chance to see who posted first. An RSS feed isn’t the best way either because results are often cached. Plus in the followup information provided by Edward, the article had been written days earlier and posted into a queue to be published on a specific day.
The other reason why focusing on it from that angle is along the lines that those in glass houses should not throw stones For example, there are occasionally articles on the well known blogs that I have already seen on lesser known blogs. Unless a blog is breaking an original story, who was first is usually a moot issue for most postings.
After thinking about this, the question “who exactly is ripping off whom?” began to bother me. This particular video has been up on YouTube since June ‘08. Did Japan Probe upload the video. No. Was proper credit to the original uploader of the video given to by Japan Probe? No. We deride sites that do not properly credit sources when it comes to written content but why is this overlooked for video media? I know you can always go back to the original but how many people do that? Lets go one step further. Did the vlogger HACINC who uploaded the video to YouTube receive permission to record and upload this segment from the original copyright holder, Fuji Sankei News? Most likely not. Isn’t this considered a violation of international copyright law?
My point is this. If it is a matter of ethical conduct coming into the picture from the plagiarism angle with regard to written content, what makes the violation of copyrighted broadcasts and therefore knowingly linking to those videos any more ethical and right? Isn’t everyone then guilty to some degree of “ripping off” someone elses work unless they are completely producing every piece of content on their own? I guess what bothers me about this situation is a sense of ethical double standards where traditional print media is being treated one way while content in the form of video is treated another. I’m not saying I have a problem with what goes on with YouTube. All I am trying to say is that stones are being cast from inside a glass house vilifying one act while ignoring another. And that is not right.
August 15th, 2008 at 10:41 amtotobenki. I don’t think that anyone (except, apparently, some members of a certain BBS) believes that someone “owns” a topic because they reported on it first, or that when someone posts something they are always obligated to follow the posting breadcrumb trail all the way back until they determine the very first originator of the topic. However, in this case the objection was not to the fact that two sites wrote about the same topic, it was that the text of the reports on both sites was virtually identical, right down to having the same misspellings.
As for the YouTube example, it hardly applies here. Each YouTube video includes links back to the YouTube page where it resides. Whether or not people click back to YouTube is irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant whether a person clicks on a text link to find out where printed information came from. The issue is providing the link, not whether anyone clicks it.
People who upload to YouTube, I believe, are fully aware of how The System works. You are putting content there in order to allow others to access it and make use of it. Anyway, if a YouTube video creator does not want their content to be embedded on other sites, they easily can disable embedding on YouTube.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:23 pm