(P-blogger may be my neologism, meaning "plagiarizing blogger." If someone else used the term earlier than August 26, 2007, I'd like to know. I did a quick Google search and came up with nothing.)
A previous post, "XSEED 4000: A Really Big Building, or a Very Small Mountain," has a number of links leading to blogs which purport to discuss the "X-SEED 4000." What struck me about them was that, although the text was remarkably unique in each, the graphics weren't. And, I didn't notice any attribution for the graphics.
Of course, this is the Internet, and in some circles everybody knows that if something is online, anyone can steal it. I mean, use it. Free. As if the poster made it personally.
Even given that conveniently elastic ethic, some of those posts were just plain sloppy.
I'm picking on one in particular, "X-SEED 4000: World’s tallest tower will house 1 million people." It's a well-written post, with useful links. It also contains graphics showing three very different proposed projects.
One project, represented by two graphics, actually is the X-Seed 4000 project. That's the one that looks like a sort of cross between the Eiffel Tower and Mount Fuji.
The latticework pyramid displayed in a diagram is the proposed Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, featured on Discovery Channel.
That beautiful interior/exterior with all the green space, a spire and a pyramid is an illustration of the proposed Tokyo's Sky City, also featured on a Discovery Channel documentary a year or so ago.
I want to be very clear about one thing: The "Inhabit" post is not the only one to have unattributed graphics. For example, there's this interior illustration of the proposed Sky City: Dated, if I'm reading it right, April 11, 2007. This may be another version of the "Inhabit" graphic, with a bit of digital artistry done to the colors.
In fact, my hat's off to the "Inhabit" post. It's the one that led me to the Taisei Company, which seems to be the architectural firm which actually designed X-Seed 4000. They don't seem to stress their visionary side: I'm counting on Wikipedia's source, Emporis Buildings, as an authority.
If you're interested in pictures of visionary architecture along these lines, I suggest the many excellent graphics of the proposed Tokyo Sky City, Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid, and more visionary architectural projects. Some of the text is in English, which is a plus when viewing this page: but the pictures alone are worth a visit. My guess is that this page is more nearly "original" than some of the knockoff pages I've run into.
Here's the point of this post. There are a few courtesies which bloggers and webmasters can observe, which would add value to their posts and pages, and prevent them from looking like nitwits:
- If you're going to steal/borrow/copy an image from another online source, do your readers a favor: tell them where you got it.
- The same goes for text.
- And, whether you say where you found the information (that's scholarship), or implicitly claim it as your own (that's plagiarism), take the trouble to make sure that the text matches the pictures, and that the pictures that are supposed to be of one thing are all of that one thing!
If this architectural muddle is any guide, I wouldn't be surprised to see pictures of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Ghandi mixed in with ones of Martin Luther King, in a blog post about Albert Schweitzer.
Related posts on Apathetic Lemming of the North:
- Mis-Matched and Unattributed: Double Whammy for These Blog Posts (August 26)
- Intellectual Property Rights: A Borderline Post? (August 22, 2007)
- Intellectual Property Violation: What to Do (August 15, 2007)
- Intellectual Property Violation: This Time With Laughs (August 10, 2007)
- Copyright Material Ripped Off? You're not alone. (August 9, 2007)
- Plagiarism-Finder Site: Copyscape (August 9, 2007)
- Another Abuse of Copyright: If This Isn't Illegal, it Should Be! (August 9, 2007)
- Copyright: a List You Shouldn't Myth (August 8, 2007)
- Copy, Steal, Rob, Whatever: Another Violation of Intellectual Property Rights (August 3, 2007)
- Copyright Infringement, YouTube, and Video Sharing (July 28, 2007)
- Sploggers: Intellectual Property Thieves (July 28, 2007)
5 comments:
Wow, excellent advice on the graphics. I honestly had not thought to include attrubution with photos etc. Will do from now on.
To give credit where credit is do is only common sense. Unfortunately there are many people who don't have any.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
Attribution is a good thing: aside from the ethical angle, it can be impressive, to have the source for some graphic identified. Especially if it's a particularly good one.
"Common sense is not so common" - and it would be a rare person who would understand the value of attribution, unless it had been introduced in school.
As a recovering English teacher, I can say that scholarly habits were 'way down on the priority lists for secondary education, and in many colleges, twenty years ago: and I see little evidence that things have changed.
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And I did that quote without an attribution! It's a translation of something Voltair did: and should be locatable in most quotation sourcing services.
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