NGO HQ accuses Anandtech of plagiarism.

[digitalwanderer]

Talking about site-vs-site stuff doesn't seem like an appropriate thread for the 3D Graphics Companies and Industry forum, particularily when neither site is Beyond3D.

When it's about 3D graphic websites I think this is the perfect place to discuss things like this here, unless you're implying we just shouldn't speak of such things because it's "rude" to say another site is doing something wrong.

I've never agreed with that philosophy personally, I think it's a silly unwritten rule to try and stifle criticism.

 

[Hooch]

......and lost in the swirl of bluster & B.S. is the fact that NGOHQ hasn't produced a shred of 'proof' except their own sense of righteous indignation.

Regeneration never answered the arguments presented in his own forums because he couldn't.

He edited/deleted some of the best arguments against this nonsense and banned the users.

He's teased us with farcical claims of contacting lawyers or "pressing charges" (lol); likely all in the name of 'hits.'

If he wants to continue digging a grave for himself by continuing to build Anandtech’s case for libel & defamation, we really don’t have any power to stop him.

I won't be visiting this site anymore because it appears this one also has a jealous streak or a chip on it's shoulder about being 'that other' tech news site.

 

[Charmaka]

Can someone who thinks AT is up the creek without a coracle please explain to me how AT could reasonably be expected to have written anything different while conforming to their writing style even if they had worked it out themselves entirely from a tip-off from an Anandtech reader, without having seen the NGO article at all?

I mean, seriously. Do you guys just not work with the English language very much or what? I genuinely and honestly cannot see how there's any evidence of the AT article being based off the actual text of the NGO article. The content is the same, yes, because the proceedure is the same, but the actual text, ie the words used, is completely different. At the very least it's a complete re-write from scratch based off the original article - I can't see any sentence in the AT where there's anything at all to suggest that it started off as the NGO article and "just had a few words swapped around" or whatever. Why do I say this? Because the AT article scans and it follows their traditional style. Unless you're very very good that doesn't happen with word-swaps - it's glaringly obvious that it's been messed with because the end result comes out disjointed and badly-styled. The only reliable way to get a sentence to scan properly in style is to write it out as a complete sentence from scratch.

If you accept that assumption then, as above, the worst-case scenario for AT is that they saw the article and then wrote their version starting with a blank page. Ok, that would be bad. But at the point where you accept that the AT article doesn't carry any text across from the NGO article and is a clean-sheet write-up which merely shares the same content, what grounds do you have to think that AT's source is NGO? A same-content situation can be explained by AT copying NGO, sure, but it can equally be explained by AT getting an email from a reader saying "hey guys, if you use PE Explorer to extract the control panel dll from the nVidia driver installer, it lists some new cards".

At this point, where you have a choice between:
a) Anandtech saw the NGO article, copied it, then denied all knowledge of the site to cover their arse
b) Anandtech got a tip-off from a reader, investigated it, wrote it up and then denied all knowledge of the NGO site because they'd genuinely never seen it before
why are you jumping straight for a) and dismissing b) out of hand?


[edit] Whoa, hang on there...

The original source from the idea clearly is NGO HQ

What? Are you seriously suggesting that it's impossible for anyone else to have come up with this independently? Hell, we don't even have any proof that NGO wasn't tipped off by a third party in the first place.

I'm not denying that it's not likely, given the internet, that NGO were the originators, but to dismiss the possibility that anyone else could have come up with this smacks of a witch-hunt, frankly.

 

[Mark]

In fact it is it seems as the forum subtitle is:
For views and discussions on 3D IHVs and industry including other websites

Wow, so it is. That's... weird... that Beyond3D would want to stick itself in the middle of mudslinging between two other sites.

Oh well, back to work.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Wow, so it is. That's... weird... that Beyond3D would want to stick itself in the middle of mudslinging between two other sites.

Oh well, back to work.

Just some quick history, the 3D Graphics Companies and Industry forum came out around the FX fiasco time when there were just too many threads dealing with innaccuracies of other websites.

It's not really meant for a place for sites to bash each other, more as a place to report/post info on what other sites are up to/scandals and such.

Sites bashing sites are more of an EB NHB thing.

 

[Geo]

If you rewrite something in your own word, it is not plagiarism and thus legal (it might still be imoral). Basically it is legal to "steal" an idea from an article (and write your own similar article even without crediting the one you stole the idea from) but it is not legal steal the article and claim it as your own.

A bit like the The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown has stolen ideas left and right but in the end the book is his own work.

Was there some mention of a lawsuit here that I missed? If not, why are you bringing legal standards into this? Having a legal right to do something does not make it the right thing to do. You admit it "might" still be immoral --wouldn't that be a better standard to be holding one of the leading hardware websites in the world to?

 

[dizietsma]

Can people please stop using the word plagiarism when it is plainly not. There is a link to an explanation of plagiarism above where it says stealing someones words or ideas, neither have been done here. The words are different and what is being talked about is not anyones idea it is the discovery of a fact.

NGO HQ have not had an idea, they have discovered/dug out a fact or facts and reported them. If Anandtech had reported these facts verbatim of NGO then it would indeed be plagiarism, but obviously they did not. There are no ideas here at all, it's about uncovering facts. The only case where it would be plagiarism on an idea would be if Anandtech claimed they were the first people to have the idea of looking at files this way to discover hardware facts, but they are not doing this, they are just reporting on what the facts are, in different language to NGO's findings.

 

[Geo]

Anyone know if there's a thread on this at AT?

What I want to hear is that Anand has looked into this personally and his findings. There have got to be some people around here whos emails can get to him.

 

[Charmaka]

Just for the record, the OED gives this definition:

1. The action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.

 

[wireframe]

It frightens me how some of you seem to think of plagiarism. By some of your accounts, translating a document to another language would make it void of such accusations because all the words were changed.

 

[Geo]

Okay, there is a thread on this at AT.

Yeah I already sent them an email, which they then proceeded to repost on their website. I also already gave them a link at the bottom of the article. We (obviously) did not copy their article, nor would we want to. Our info came straight from you guys over GTalk.

This is only about the billionth time some no name website claimed an "Insider" article was copied, and not surprisingly the first thing ngotech did was repost the email (well at least my response to the email, not their portion of it), and then write a long sob story. Unfortunately this will be their highest traffic day all year!

Kristopher

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1725873&enterthread=y

 

[Hooch]

It frightens me how some of you seem to think of plagiarism. By some of your accounts, translating a document to another language would make it void of such accusations because all the words were changed.

That's not the issue.

The contents of the nvidia are a fact. Regeneration claims he 'owns' the fact because he discovered it first. That's what he thinks "plagiarism" is. (Nevermind mind the fact that nvidia owns the copyright to the code, but I digress)

If the real world worked that way, the whole idea of journalism goes out the window. NBC couldn't report on a fact if CNN got to it first.

No one could write & report their version of events, because CNN was 'first,' and any further reporting would be 'plagiarism.' Do I need to act this scenario out with sock pockets?

Regeneration's only "proof" that plargiarism ocurred was that he wrote his article first, and that Anandtech wrote an article later. (Never mind that is worded differently, has different screen shots of their work, on is based on a different driver). Will someone please hold his hand and explain to him slowly that that is not what 'plagiarism' is?

 

[Hooch]

This thread is saddening beyond measure. I'd say something to directly reply to the downright idiocy in it, but the kind of people I'd be directing it to probably wouldn't understand it at all, and would be too lazy to check dictionary.com when in doubt.

Heck, I'll be a nice guy and just copy-paste the definition for "plagiarism" from source WordNet 2.0, Copyright 2003 Princeton University, available from dictionary.com:
Do I even have to go further here? Your own personal value system might feel that it's OK to steal people's ideas without adding any original content and then not giving credit. That's alright, and it's your own personal belief of what is right and wrong. But, like it or not, the english term "plagiarism" still applies to it.

What happened here is clear imo: a relatively new internet journalist at AnandTech got contacted by some of his "industry" friends that basically gave him the information in the article with a couple of copy-pastes, explaining how to look into the necessary DLL. Then, that new hire created an article around it, copying his friend's words with permission - problem is, that "friend" hardly got the permission to copy the article's words. It is also obviously possible that his did such a thing in his subconscious; it is wellknown that if you read a sentence explaining something and then you've got to explain it yourself, you are likely to copy such a sentence yourself, without even ever having typed it before.

The person who did plagiarism would in such a case - that is, should I be right- would not be AT's journalist, but his so-called source. This does not in any way excuse AT from not properly handling this situation, and denying proper idea credit. As Regeneration said, the work involved in finding the proper DLL and the proper location in that DLL is substantial: you cannot just pretend you didn't copy the idea if you're

Problem also is that AT clearly says they didn't find that themselves: "clever users" did. And it is wellknown here that the clever users are in fact from NGO HQ. So, another journalist not involved in the writing of this specific article later denying this is absolutely unacceptable. Everything before that is acceptable if you consider someone might have tricked them; but saying there is hardly any ressemblance between the two is ridiculous. The original source from the idea clearly is NGO HQ, and not accepting you did a professional mistake by trusting a random guy giving you random information is unacceptable, even more so for a site that does NOT classify itself as a rumor archive.


Uttar

You're hopeless.

Format C: & go buy a X-Box please.

 

[Hooch]

You're hopeless.

Format C: & go buy a X-Box please.

Sorryk I take that back. Arguing with people (not you specifically) who are stubborn & illogical can be frustrating.

 

[PatrickL]

Hum, read carefully what uttar wrote and tell us what is wrong besides your one sided view ?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Sorryk I take that back. Arguing with people (not you specifically) who are stubborn & illogical can be frustrating.

What exactly was stubborn & illogical about what Uttar wrote?

 

[Deathlike2]

Sorryk I take that back. Arguing with people (not you specifically) who are stubborn & illogical can be frustrating.

It's still not an excuse.

I'm on the belief that Anandtech was the "last site on the earth" to know this was already posted news. However, it doesn't take back that fact that they did not "keep up" with this story that has been around some of the major sites at least a week or so back.

Anandtech should apologize for the simple fact that they were the last ones to rereport this info. I don't believe that there is anything that suggests plagurism, but one can easily come to that conclusion (of possible plagurism) given that simple fact that this info was out earlier (within a reasonable amount of time).

Uttar's post has a fairly logical and reasonable course of events that led to this. It is definately possible that "these sources" may have directly taken some of the original source (in this case NGO HQ) and redid it as his own info. There's nothing improbable about that.

In any case, Anandtech needs to apologize, whether or not they are directly at fault. At the very least, they need to apologize to NGO HQ because the source essentially did them "a bad favor" or so to speak.

 

[wireframe]

That's not the issue.

The contents of the nvidia are a fact. Regeneration claims he 'owns' the fact because he discovered it first. That's what he thinks "plagiarism" is. (Nevermind mind the fact that nvidia owns the copyright to the code, but I digress)

If the real world worked that way, the whole idea of journalism goes out the window. NBC couldn't report on a fact if CNN got to it first.

No one could write & report their version of events, because CNN was 'first,' and any further reporting would be 'plagiarism.' Do I need to act this scenario out with sock pockets?

Regeneration's only "proof" that plargiarism ocurred was that he wrote his article first, and that Anandtech wrote an article later. (Never mind that is worded differently, has different screen shots of their work, on is based on a different driver). Will someone please hold his hand and explain to him slowly that that is not what 'plagiarism' is?

I am not talking about the case in question. If you had read all my posts in this thread you would notice I have made no comment about it directly.

As for journalists and sock pockets. Why do you think it is that every new network sends their own journalist when they could all just copy each other? I thought I described this when I talked about "discovery" which is different from "invention". However, this has really very little to do with it as most news events are public domain and considered general knowledge, albeit limited in scope by location until that information is spread. Furthermore, have you never noticed that hot news ("this just in") is often preceeded by "From Associated Press" or "from Reuters" because the original story was not discovered by their own journalists? You will also hear cross-referencing of networks until they get their own journalists on the ground.

Think of more specific journalism like interviews. One network cannot rephrase an interview of a rival and pass it off as their own.

Now I shall comment on this particular case with the little and uncertain information that I have about it.

The contents of drivers are a fact. I said this earlier. Any rights to these "facts" inside the driver belong to the manufacturer. So, you could very well have a case of simultaneous discovery. However (however...*cough*), because a fact exists does not mean that everyone will discover it by themselves. Now, if there is reason to suspect that someone lifted the discovery by circumstantial evidence, that is also plagiarism. Just like CNN would say "<newstation> is reporting an incident at <place>. We'll have more on that story as it develops" until they have their own team on it for discovery

We are talking about intellectual property here and property cannot exist without work. If you are just lifting someone else's idea, hoping nobody will notice, you are stealing. It doesn't matter that it will eventually become public domain or general knowledge.

If I were you I'd keep my socks in my pockets. The other place they would go would make for very muffled conversation.

EDIT: I should probably make it clear that I have no opinion about who is right or wrong in this matter. Frankly, I don't even care. However, I could see how an original author who felt his work was stolen would and someone being accused of it certainly would too.

 

[John Reynolds]

Okay, there is a thread on this at AT.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1725873&enterthread=y

Tom Pabst is going to be writing an article about how these other major hardware sites are now plagiarizing his ego/arrogance.

 

[Deathlike2]

Tom Pabst is going to be writing an article about how these other major hardware sites are now plagiarizing his ego/arrogance.