NGO HQ accuses Anandtech of plagiarism.

[Crusher]

What is wrong is this:

1) This is not a unique idea.
2) There is no proof, anywhere, that AnandTech has even visited Regeneration's website.
3) AnandTech's editor claims to have received the information from readers of the site via GTalk IMs, which is consistent with their original story.
4) AnandTech has made a concession to try and appease Regeneration by including a link to his artcile, but still maintain that that was not their source of information, and again no proof has been shown otherwise.

Now just because Utter believes Regeneration's story and is able to perform the arduous task of quoting Dictionary.com, that does not make this plagarism. It is not plagarism. No judge in the world would rule in Regeneration's favor on this claim. If he really thought his process was so unique and valuable, perhaps he should have filed a patent on it. Unfortunately, there are years worth of prior art that would invalidate his patent, but at least he wouldn't come off as trying to leech fame from the famous.

Regeneration, whether you want to believe it or not, one or two of the other 6 billion people on this planet are indeed capable of coming up with the same ideas you are. In fact, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people out there who grab every beta driver they can find and try to rip them apart in the hopes of finding out new information. My advice to you is let it go before you do something really stupid and lose real money in this pissing match.

 

[lopri]

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

Haha.. a good one.

 

[Geo]

Yeah, more than a little hubris in that thread, unfortunately --including AT's own writer. I've got to think the Big Guy wouldn't actually appreciate that. But what do I know.

Unfortunately, if this really did come from a chat, then unless the log was kept the trail has gone cold. I can easily see it going:

Chatboy: I hear if you dissassemble the newest NV drivers with PE Explorer there's some interesting stuff in there on new cards.

AT: Yeah? We'll take a peek.

Now it would be sloppy not to ask a few more questions (like "where did you hear that?") if your intent is to write an article from it, but I can see it going that way.

 

[Arun]

Hooch, for the record, I personally don't think AT commited any plagiarism. It would only be plagiarism if they said they thought of looking in that specific DLL by themselves, while in fact they said "clever users" did.
What would be plagiarism is if they copied content out of NGO's article word-for-word; some sentences are indeed very, very similar, but I feel that *might* just be a coincidence, so I'll give AT the benefit of the doubt about that specific point.

So, what I'm simply personally criticizing AT for here, is not properly crediting the original author of the idea of looking in that DLL. Now, it could be that there has been an user who, one month after the NGO article, discovered this part of that DLL by himself, totally independently, and then informed AnandTech about it, while refusing to be given credit. It's not impossible, but Occam's Razor seems to imply we should consider the other option most seriously before even thinking about that one.

Is refusing to give proper, direct credit to someone as bad as plagiarism? Yes and no; no, because at least you're not pretending it as your own work, but yes because it's even more of a direct infringement to basic intellectual honesty. In this case however, I'm doubtful AT did it directly; as I said before, I would rather believe that one of their readers or sources did this; in such case, that specific user would have actually commited plagiarism, while AT would only be guilty of not giving proper credit. And then again, if the person plagiarized NGO HQ's work, it's likely he gave authorization not to give him credit, in which case AT's only fault - although still a large one imo - was not to research what they were posting before actually posting it on their fricking frontpage. Remember, Google IS your friend. I'm convinced typing "GeForce 6800GS" 10 minutes before posting that article would have given Tuan a link to NGO HQ; now it's a bit hard to check though, because the first 20 pages are spammed by sites linking at Anandtech about it...

Anyhow, the only thing that would still interest me is a direct correspondance between Regeneration and Tuan, to try to amically determine who's the "weakest link" who commited an actual professional *mistake*, rather than just pointing fingers. However, considering AT's weak response to these accusations, I would find that alone to be a fault - they should have looked into that themselves, to make sure the claims were wrong, before giving an unsatisfactory reply to someone who potentially figured out what they were writing about. There's still time to correct all this, though, I'm sure.


Uttar
EDIT: Just reading that AT thread, and I guess this kinda makes the whole thing totally obvious now... I would have hoped AT knew better than that:

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.

I was only hope they are not so naive as to think all ideas and techniques on internet forums were thought by the forum's members... And same for chats, ofc.

 

[Hooch]

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

Regeneration claims is still unsubstantiated. Uttar tries to substantiate it by making another unsubstantiated claim about an anandtech greenhorn not observing the rules of the journalism road. So it's a theory supposedly validated by another theory. If you don't have see a problem with that then I suppose this isn't going to get anywhere.

Regeneration made the allegation without an once of proof beside his own ego & the coincidence that both sites wrote about the same thing independent of each other.

Regeneration actions speak volumes:

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.

 

[Geo]

Remember, Google IS your friend. I'm convinced typing "GeForce 6800GS" 10 minutes before posting that article would have given Tuan a link to NGO HQ; now it's a bit hard to check though, because the first 20 pages are spammed by sites linking at Anandtech about it...

Good point there. No telling how many generations it went thru at internet-speed before chatboy said "Hey, I hear". He could have picked it up off a forum post from a guy who read, etc.

 

[Hooch]

Hooch, for the record, I personally don't think AT commited any plagiarism. It would only be plagiarism if they said they thought of looking in that specific DLL by themselves, while in fact they said "clever users" did.
What would be plagiarism is if they copied content out of NGO's article word-for-word; some sentences are indeed very, very similar, but I feel that *might* just be a coincidence, so I'll give AT the benefit of the doubt about that specific point.

So, what I'm simply personally criticizing AT for here, is not properly crediting the original author of the idea of looking in that DLL. Now, it could be that there has been an user who, one month after the NGO article, discovered this part of that DLL by himself, totally independently, and then informed AnandTech about it, while refusing to be given credit. It's not impossible, but Occam's Razor seems to imply we should consider the other option most seriously before even thinking about that one.

Is refusing to give proper, direct credit to someone as bad as plagiarism? Yes and no; no, because at least you're not pretending it as your own work, but yes because it's even more of a direct infringement to basic intellectual honesty. In this case however, I'm doubtful AT did it directly; as I said before, I would rather believe that one of their readers or sources did this; in such case, that specific user would have actually commited plagiarism, while AT would only be guilty of not giving proper credit. And then again, if the person plagiarized NGO HQ's work, it's likely he gave authorization not to give him credit, in which case AT's only fault - although still a large one imo - was not to research what they were posting before actually posting it on their fricking frontpage. Remember, Google IS your friend. I'm convinced typing "GeForce 6800GS" 10 minutes before posting that article would have given Tuan a link to NGO HQ; now it's a bit hard to check though, because the first 20 pages are spammed by sites linking at Anandtech about it...

Anyhow, the only thing that would still interest me is a direct correspondance between Regeneration and Tuan, to try to amically determine who's the "weakest link" who commited an actual professional *mistake*, rather than just pointing fingers. However, considering AT's weak response to these accusations, I would find that alone to be a fault - they should have looked into that themselves, to make sure the claims were wrong, before giving an unsatisfactory reply to someone who potentially figured out what they were writing about. There's still time to correct all this, though, I'm sure.


Uttar
EDIT: Just reading that AT thread, and I guess this kinda makes the whole thing totally obvious now... I would have hoped AT knew better than that:
I was only hope they are not so naive as to think all ideas and techniques on internet forums were thought by the forum's members... And same for chats, ofc.

That's pretty reasonable and thought-out. I'm just not sure Anandtech had a responsibiity here to credit someone for the *.dll idea. Nowhere in the Anandtech does it suggest that looking inside the *.dll was an Anandtech-exclusive technique, or that they were the first to do so. They say their own users told them & they credited their users.

The *.dll idea isn't a copyright or patented process, so why is their a duty for Anandtech to interrogate their users to find out exactly how they came about this process? The internet being what it is, that investigation from person to person could take days.

Also, when they the eventually got to Regeneration, why would they stop there? Because he says he was first? If so, then Regeneration would have to provide proof that it was his oiginial idea, and then he would have to scour the world to make sure that he indeed was first. And what would be the point of all this? Common sense says you have to draw the line somewhere.....

 

[Arun]

Uttar tries to substantiate it by making another unsubstantiated claim about an anandtech greenhorn not observing the rules of the journalism road. So it's a theory supposedly validated by another theory.

You may need glasses, because my posts are full of conditional expressions clearly expressing a feeling of uncertainty. All I'm doing is giving my own personal opinion of what I feel most likely happened, based on my ex-insider knowledge of the industry, for example when I maintained "GPU: Rumor Watch".

Furthermore, it would seem to me that the quote I posted in my above post implies that it is likely this pretty much is what happened: someone on GTalk having read NGO HQ and hinting AT about it. In this case, the term "plagiarism" doesn't directly fit, although it could depending on how the "clever user" presented it; and even if there was a log, I doubt we'd ever get access to it, so we'll never know. Not that it matters anyway.

Furthermore, your accusations on Regeneration's actions are a bit heavy to swallow; I did see him reply to a couple of arguements, and some of the posts in there totally merited getting deleted. I haven't seen him making a direct reference to lawyers - I might have missed it - but it would seem like a logical thing to do to try to make people understand than, should his exact claims be accurate (copy-paste without credits; imo, it isn't what happened, most likely), then it would be legal to do such a thing.
Of course, it would make no sense to sue AT for such a thing, but I doubt he meant it in more than a way to make trolls understand they have no right to do what they did, if they indeed did such a thing.

Furthermore, deleting posts after writing a provocative article or editorial tends to be relatively required to keep the discussion interesting. Last editorial I published, I had about 60% of the replies within the first 3-4 hours being incredibly insulting and negative. Then I looked at the IP, and just about all of them came from "same IP, different usernames" guys. I deleted all of them, didn't even ban anyone iirc, and looked at the feedback peacefully within the next couple of days; most of it was positive and even created a small discussion.
So, if you feel even the most insulting of posts shouldn't be deleted, then I'm sure you never moderated a real forum, and even more so one where controversial subjects are raised. "Act first, talk later", as they say


Uttar
P.S.: As for having the moral obligation to credit NGO; well, if they didn't know about it, I would personally totally excuse them from not crediting them in the original article (even though they could have used Google). But I would have exepcted a much more professional reply from them than just "Yeah, sounds like you did about the same thing we did". Properly crediting them, considering it would be most likely they are the original source of the dll decomposition idea, would only make sense.
Although I'll admit what they did is at least better than refusing NGO HQ found out about it before they did and thus not linking to them.

 

[bigz]

I think Uttar has hit the nail on the head here, I'm pretty much in agreement with what he has said.

I'm still interested in why Regen got hold of Kristopher rather than Tuan (the author of the article as it stands now). I seem to remember Kristopher's name being at the top of it on the 30th, but I can't be 100% sure.

 

[Rodéric]

"News" posted, now everyone knows about this story.

This forum is not a court, and this is not a case, none of you have enough informations to tell whether it's true or false, so just make up your own personal opinion and leave it at that.

CLOSED.