I was checking out TechMeme and saw an item by Nate Anderson at Ars Technica. It caught my eye because the headline is “AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections “irrelevant,” and I knew that this had to be a reference to AT&T COO Randall Stephenson’s presentation to an investor group two days ago.
Having blogged on that same presentation, I jumped to Anderson’s item and was quite honored and surprised to see my own coverage excerpted verbatim in Anderson’s piece. The problem is, however, that Anderson has excerpted my write-up with no link back to IP Democracy or acknowledgement as to the source of his “quote.” (And he does put my excerpt in quote format, but he has lifted more than just my quotation of what Stephenson said. He lifted my original writing, which included a quote of what Stephenson said.)
Here’s what Anderson reproduces from my piece:
“In the foreseeable future, having a 15 Mbps Internet capability is irrelevant because the backbone doesn’t transport at those speeds,” he told the conference attendees. Stephenson said that AT&T’s field tests have shown “no discernable difference” between AT&T’s 1.5 Mbps service and Comcast’s 6 Mbps because the problem is not in the last mile but in the backbone.
Anyone reading this might think that Anderson wrote that bit himself, or, more likely, might be confused as to the source of the quote, since Anderson doesn’t identify it. But that’s not the worst part. He does it again later, lifting wholesale a sentence I wrote in that same piece, and again offers no attribution or link back to IP Democracy.
Here’s his second lift:
In terms of Lightspeed’s ability to push through hundreds of video channels, including high-def video, “we’re not constrained by bandwidth. You’re not constrained by the size of the pipe anymore,” Stephenson said, referring to the switched-video capacity of the network which delivers only one service to a single customer at a time.
Later on Anderson makes reference to a presentation by Comcast Cable President Steve Burke at the same investor conference. That’s funny, because I did a write-up of Burke’s presentation. This time, however, Anderson has a quote of somebody else’s write-up of Burke’s presentation. Again, he doesn’t identify the source.
This doesn’t technically qualify as plagiarism, but it does skirt some kind of ethical line. It’s not exactly plagiarism because Anderson goes so far as to put my passages in a quote format, so he’s not really implying that he wrote it himself. On the other hand, he isn’t acknowledging the source of the quote either.
To me it’s not only ethically gray, but it’s also bad blogging writing. Anderson’s later quote regarding Steve Burke obviously came from somewhere, but where? That’s just confusing.
I sent Anderson an email requesting that he give IP Democracy attribution or at the least a link. I’ll let you know what happens.
Update: As Rafat points out in his comment, Ars Technica is not a blog per se but a news/aggregation site.
Update: I heard from Nate and he claims the lack of attribution was an oversight, and I’m prepared to accept that. However, I did find other articles in Ars Technica that didn’t provide attribution for quotes. Morever, Karl from DSLReports.com in his comment claims that he has emailed Ars Technica about this sort of thing. So it seems that the folks at Ars should make a greater effort to see that their sources are cited. Here’s what Nate said:
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’m not quite sure what happened—we always link our sources, and I had the address ready to insert into the piece, but somehow it didn’t make the final draft. I’ll make sure it gets corrected
Update: Nate emailed me again, this time a little upset over this blog item. He corrects my assertion that he didn’t provide a link for the quote related to Steve Burke and maintains it was always in his piece. It’s there now, and I swear I couldn’t find it before. Nate makes the point that my supposed error highlights the difficulties of keeping track of links. Here’s what he says:
Perhaps making such a mistake yourself will illuminate just how easy it is to unintentionally miss something. In the case of your piece, there was no attempt to “lift” quotes without attribution. It was an accident, and I apologize. What possible other reason could I have for not citing the source? Anyone can look it up with a simple Google search, and I set the quotes apart from the main text to make it clear they were not my words. To immediately get upset about this and accuse me of borderline plagiarism without even waiting for my response seems hasty at best.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:04 PM|Comments(4)
As I explained in an e-mail to Cynthia, it is our policy to always link to our sources. That would include either the outlet first reporting a story, or in some cases press releases directly from the principals involved in a story. Our failing to link to Cynthia's story was an oversight by the author, and has been corrected. We regret the error.
Posted by: Eric Bangeman at April 1, 2006 2:38 PM
Since our users (and techs) are usually the first to get news of new speeds, we have seen similar uncredited information pulled from us (dslreports.com), as well. This is only a recent development at Ars.
It's usually not plagiarism, but it is in bad taste. I recently had to e-mail them as well. CNET's Margarite Reardon has occasionally been guilty of the same thing, writing a mock-up on speed/price info we've unveiled first without crediting us.
I sent an e-mail in this regard by never heard back.
Posted by: Karl at April 1, 2006 10:18 AM
"Dubious Blogosphere Ethics?" Cynthia, Ars Technica is not a blog...just a news/aggregation site which has been around since 1998..so it is the site and writer's specific ethics, and has nothing to do with the blogosphere.
Just keep that in mind..other than that, all your points are valid.
Rafat
Posted by: Rafat at March 31, 2006 9:10 PM
It definitely does raise some interesting questions. On one hand, it could be an oversight. After all, who hasn't forgotten to put a source link in from time to time or add a footnote to an article. It's bad blogging and bad writing, but it's a simple enough mistake and, since he did put the quotes in blockquote format, that does seem to indicate some effort not to outright steal.
If the error is corrected, then we can all laugh at the simple mistake and move on. If not, then perhaps he is trying to skirt some ethical issues while not providing outbound links. Why one would do that, I don't know (I really fail to see what would be gained) but I've seen more than my share of strange plagiarism cases. This wouldn't be the weirdest.
Good luck with your issue. Let me know if I can help.
Posted by: Jonathan Bailey at March 31, 2006 8:58 PM
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