Poll: Is this really "stealing from the author"?

[Dirty Hipsters]

There was recently a thread on The Escapist called "One of the WBC Phelps-Clan has left the church..." (which I will link to in the bottom of this post), which has since been locked (I am not disputing this lock).

In this thread the OP quoted the entirety of a lengthy written piece from another website, and clearly credited the original author in that post, and provided a link to the website from which he was quoting. A number of people in that thread then proceeded to say that the thread's OP was stealing from that author by quoting the entirety of the written work in his thread.

Personally I believe that what the OP did in no way constitutes stealing from the author. Not only did the OP give credit to the original author of the written work, but he also linked to the original website where that work could be viewed, therefore the OP clearly did not state that the written work was his own. Furthermore what he copied wasn't a book or an article, or anything else that the original author was being paid to write, but what looked to be a blog post, posted on a website completely devoid of any advertisements, meaning that the author did not lose any money from the written content being posted on another site, and the OP certainly didn't gain any money from quoting the work on this forum.

Despite these facts numerous people claimed that the OP was stealing from the original author in a manner tantamount to digital piracy along the lines of distributing music for illegal download.

My question to everyone is, do you agree that what the OP of that thread did constitutes stealing from that author?

The thread can be found here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/for...-WBC-Phelps-Clan-has-left-the-church#16454289

The website where the original content was posted can be found here:

https://medium.com/reporters-notebook/d63ecca43e35

Again, this isn't meant to dispute moderator actions in locking the thread, it's just meant as a general discussion of morality and proper protocol in regards to written works.

 

[Rawne1980]

No, it wasn't "stealing from the author" ... it was quoting a news source.

But this is the escapist, where some folk will complain about damn near everything.

 

[Stasisesque]

I would suggest it was a bad move on the OP's part. They copy pasted the entire article, not just a snippet, there was no reason for anyone to click the source link as everything they needed had been provided for them in the thread. This denies the original author hits, and hits are a pretty big deal if your career revolves around blogging.

Stealing, no, they weren't claiming it as their own. But I also would not condone it.

 

[Cabisco]

No, it wasn't "stealing from the author" ... it was quoting a news source.

But this is the escapist, where some folk will complain about damn near everything.

Very much agreed, I didn't think it was stealing at all and it's very common practice. I guess the point the poster was trying to make is that by pasting the article the author doesn't get hits on his website, but then again I would never have heard of his article without the original post and I for one tend to never click links.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

And I'm totally stealing from Gamespot when I repost their news reports that Escapist hasn't written up yet.

 

[Andy Shandy]

People got pissy about that?

Half the news stories the are posted that I've seen whether they've been posted in Gaming or Off-Topic are done in the exact same way.

And some of them don't even post the source of the story either. I know The Escapist occasionally loves to get riled up about something, but this is a bit ridiculous.

 

[lechat]

woulda been better if he had made the effort to just quote the highlights and allow us to read the original if we felt inclined but this is a forum not a thesis

 

[Tom_green_day]

If you see a film played at the cinema, is that stealing from whoever made it? No, because you're crediting them and although they probably won't make a huge amount of money from it (none for the author of this, and in a film most goes towards making it in the first place, marketing, actors etc) but you say it's by them and people know it's not original. Yeah these two are miles different but it's the same scenario IMO.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

It helps to draw a distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism. One is about law and the other is about professional ethics.

From my university experience, proper crediting, as well as making clear that you didn't write it (which it was, since no-one expected a random Escapist poster to get an interview with a WBC member) obviates any chance of plagiarism. What exact process is required would actually depend on your university's code of ethics. Because this was not an academic work, nothing more was required than to put the article in quotes (making it obvious that it wasn't original work) and to cite the original link at the bottom.

As a matter of law, this is a little fuzzier, but I imagine it would be covered by fair use. There's a substantiality issue because the whole of the work was copied, but that is not necessarily fatal. And, obviously, it's only an issue of the rightsholder decides to sue the poster (incredibly unlikely.)

 

[Tyelcapilu]

Simply out of decency to both the author of the article and the readers of the forum, the person quoting should simply quote a small summary of the article (or piece). Wall-of-text quotes are distasteful IMO.

 

[DoPo]

I would suggest it was a bad move on the OP's part. They copy pasted the entire article, not just a snippet, there was no reason for anyone to click the source link as everything they needed had been provided for them in the thread. This denies the original author hits, and hits are a pretty big deal if your career revolves around blogging.

See, what you're saying would make sense if that was the whole of it. The website is getting a backlink from a really high SEO ranking website like the Escapist. That's not direct hits but people would click on the link and that would help with traffic. It's more exposure. Even with that aside, the backlink alone is highly praised. That's the whole reason spambots swing by the forums here - I hope you don't think the site owners expect to get sales or whatever from spamming - no, it's SEO ranking they are after. Not to mention the text is not obscured (behind a spoiler tag, for example), so keywords are repeated along with the link.

No, they won't get as many hits as just a link - no that doesn't really hurt them.

 

[Stasisesque]

I would suggest it was a bad move on the OP's part. They copy pasted the entire article, not just a snippet, there was no reason for anyone to click the source link as everything they needed had been provided for them in the thread. This denies the original author hits, and hits are a pretty big deal if your career revolves around blogging.

See, what you're saying would make sense if that was the whole of it. The website is getting a backlink from a really high SEO ranking website like the Escapist. That's not direct hits but people would click on the link and that would help with traffic. It's more exposure. Even with that aside, the backlink alone is highly praised. That's the whole reason spambots swing by the forums here - I hope you don't think the site owners expect to get sales or whatever from spamming - no, it's SEO ranking they are after. Not to mention the text is not obscured (behind a spoiler tag, for example), so keywords are repeated along with the link.

No, they won't get as many hits as just a link - no that doesn't really hurt them.

Granted, but a backlink would have been provided with or without the entire article copy/pasted. That's my issue with it, my only issue.

As for keywords being repeated, again yes it's unlikely many people just wanting to share and comment on something would know exactly what to say for optimum recognition, but I would then argue that it was highly likely the main keywords would have been repeated in both the thread title, the original post promoting discussion and the remainder of the thread.

You are right, I just still cannot condone the way the OP went about his post.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I don't see it as stealing from the author, but the post was badly set out. Putting the entire article (a massive slab of text) then a link is annoying, but not morally wrong.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

It could have been done better (sticking the text into a spoiler box and only taking snippets) but he included a link.

Not much else you really can do. Besides I tend to avoid threads that just post the link if the site isn't known to me.

 

[Mossberg Shotty]

Simply out of decency to both the author of the article and the readers of the forum, the person quoting should simply quote a small summary of the article (or piece). Wall-of-text quotes are distasteful IMO.

Yes, its imperative that they summarize it for convenience. Or at least take off a period somewhere for legal reasons.

I understand not wanting to type out a works cited paper just to post a link, but you should at least give credit somewhere. Still though, I don't consider this stealing.

 

[TheDoctor455]

No, it wasn't "stealing from the author" ... it was quoting a news source.

But this is the escapist, where some folk will complain about damn near everything.

Yeah... and just like Fox News... they'll do so even if there's no basis in fact to it.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Put another way, it was arguably a small disservice to the blog poster, and for all the folks out there, you generally shouldn't copy+pasta an entire article. But actually giving a fuck about someone copy+pasting an article (particularly when the person gave credit and a link) is much worse.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Since OP credited the author and gave his site more traffic for posting it here, no it's not stealing, nor is it morally wrong. If that was the case, most university theses would be invalid, because they incorporate quoting many sources to get points across.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No it's not stealing. It would be stealing if credit to the original author wasn't given, but since it was it can hardly be called stealing.

 

[Strazdas]

i thought this was going to be a piracy thread. haha.

no, news are there to be copied. thats the purpose of news - to be known. There was no stealing involved. Local news here work this way too. one agency write a news article, exact same appears on 5 linkin to original. next article gets done in another company, again all 5 has it. Thing is, people can choose the website theyl ike most and still get all the news and dont ahve to enter some ads and bugs ridden website just because the people in there managed to type faster.

Capcha: Worship nothing
Capcha always know what to say.