Questions of copy and paste from BAJR

[BAJR Host]

Here is one for the legal eagles..

A website has taken to copying links, text and data from BAJR - (oh no not again!) these links have taken me years to gather, and keep up to date. --- However, I now find that although asked to stop it.. I am cheekily informed that

quoteAll links and decriptions (sic) are sourced from the associated websites shown on this page)

The funny thing is that some of the text is written specifically by me, looking at the potential benefits of a particular piece of software for example. and there it is. I checked more of their website, and any text spelt correctly comes directly from others... a straight copy and paste... and then replace name of originator with their own.

To add insult to injury, their own website now carries a terms and conditions notice,

quote:...You may not otherwise copy, distribute, sell or publish any of the Content of the Site without prior written permission...

:face-huh:

Contact with them only results in quips about taking my comments into consideration. so.. next step? the service provider or the lawyer?

:face-thinks:

I'll be kind to them for a couple of days... and give them a chance to reconsider - so I won't say who they are yet.

I get so pissed off when you spend a lot of time creating something from scratch and then others come along - copy it and stick their name on it, as if they made the original effort. Have we become a copy paste society?


Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Mohandas Gandhi

[Sparky]

I get so pissed off when you spend a lot of time creating something from scratch and then others come along - copy it and stick their name on it, as if they made the original effort. Have we become a copy paste society?

Sparky

[med]

I can't provide legal information but this is my 2-cents worth--I worked with a PI who did this occassionally:face-huh:; worked with a BA who did this fully and consistently:face-confused:; studied with an English gal who said she did this on her dissertation and bragged about it[?]; college lecturers may take student ideas and make them their own[:0]; PhDs may plagarize ideas, theories, field findings and credits and publish as their own; some may make honest errors and then correct them. Some Archaeology may not be high on the scale of integrity.

Cut and paste without citation is a breach of copyright law from physical texts/books/magazine etc. or from the Internet whether there is a copyright notation or not. Best to keep up your copyright declaration on each webpage.

we don't know what we don't know

[BAJR Host]

Yup... all my pages have © and there are strict terms and conditions for derivative work. An example would be the slow methodical search I did on Local Societies.. (took over 2 months off and on) Now I could have cheated and used the Current Archaeology List or the CBA list.. but that's just WRONG.. and... you end up copying any mistakes and dead links along with it. so I started with a list of every county in the UK.. and one by one, searched for archaeology groups in each county.. still missed some, but at least I knew that what was on my database was
a) up to date
b) accurate
c) non-derivative

I often leave a tell-tale in my datasets so I can prove copyright - a misspelled word, or an unusual way of writing a phone number. just one.. one that is hard to spot, but leaves no doubt as to derivation.

So perhaps I should contact the web-host and discuss copyright breach - they could then have the option of removing their website if they do not remove the offending work. The funny thing would be, that they will spend just as much time doing all this as if they had put in some real work in the first place.



Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Mohandas Gandhi

[kevin wooldridge]

And I also think David that if the reasonable approach doesn't work, let us all know who these people are so that we too can bombard them with reasonable requests......

With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...

[Bones]

I would be well and truly miffed if that happened to me! Why should you be 'nice' to the guilty party?! They have blatantly ripped off all your hard work as their own Mr. Hosty!!

[BAJR Host]

They think they are being smart... but at the end of the day, some students should be careful about how they start out in archaeology - after all it is a small world.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Mohandas Gandhi

[Oxbeast]

They're students? You could try to approach their institution, which is likely to have policies about plagiarism. If they don't, then they certainly should. They usualy have policies about not bringing the institution into disrepute as well.

[BAJR Host]

hmmm worth a go, I could contact the place that their 'webmaster' is at and ask for some action. anyway... it should do them no good in the long run when I contact all the others they have borrowed from. though they will try and brazen it out I expect.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Mohandas Gandhi

[Misty]

You may have looked already - but there is a website called Copyscape which gives information on what to do if this happens, sending a "cease and desist" letter etc,