[PLUG-TALK] MRC - Internet's Long Memory

[glen e. p. ropella]

Thus spake Russell Senior circa 06/02/09 01:28 PM:
> Maybe I'm weird or something, but I have never quite understood the
> sensitivity to plagiarism.  I mean, how far is it from repeating a
> joke you heard without crediting the original author (assuming you
> could even find them).
> 
> If something is good, to me, it bears repeating.  All this
> credit-seeking nonsense just slows everything down.  I think credit
> ultimately flows to the credit-worthy anyway.

I can understand repeating a joke, without noting the source, as long as
there's no pretense to having made it up yourself.  But if a person
allows their audience to think they invented something when they didn't,
then it's dishonest.

What MRC did was even worse.  He cited Michael Rasmussen's text and
changed it without noting his changes, making it seem like Michael
Rasmussen wrote:

> Thanks to Michael Robinson for having an archive he could access.

when what he actually wrote was:

> Thanks to Rich Shepard for having an archive he could access.

That's not mere plagiarism, it's rewriting history, spoofing, and all
sorts of other, nasty things.

If we tolerate that, then we're implicitly condoning all sorts of bad
behavior.

-- 
glen e. p. ropella, http://ropella.net/~gepr