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.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:04 PM | Print | Comments (4)
The AP’s Brian Murphy has this interesting article about the introduction of a “kosher” mobile phone last year. It seems that ultra-Orthodox religious leaders worry about the ability of multimedia and Internet-enabled phones to contaminate religious practices and have worked with a Motorola subsidiary to produce a phone that only offers…voice. Nothing else.
The kosher phone is stripped down to its original function: making and receiving calls. There’s no text messaging, no Internet access, no video options, no camera. More than 10,000 numbers for phone sex, dating services and other offerings are blocked. A team of rabbinical overseers makes sure the list is up to date. These are the same rabbis who have told followers to scorn television and radio. But mobile phones are considered just too essential in one of the world’s most tech-friendly nations. The ultra-Orthodox account for about 7 percent of Israel’s 7 million people.
One orthodox magazine called phones that allow for music, video and photo downloads “a candy store for the evil impulse.” Conservative Moslems are also interested in buying POCS (plain old cell phones — I just made that up.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
This hasn’t been a good week for independent VoIP providers. It started off with Andy Abramson’s scoop that Skype is coping with a lawsuit that could (but probably won’t) strike at the heart of eBay’s high-profile purchase. Now, it looks like Vonage, the feisty company that pioneered the VoIP market in the U.S., is having trouble with its IPO, giving rise to the idea that Vonage’s only option is to sell out to a traditional telco.
But, as Om points out, who will buy Vonage? Although the company is experiencing tremendous growth, it’s also spilling a lot of cash to gain that growth. And in the end, why would any rival need Vonage? Phone companies and cable companies already have the capability to launch their own in-house VoIP options, so at most all they would want from Vonage is the customer relationships, which they can probably easily swipe anyway with attractive triple-play bundles.
Alex Saunders looks at this another way in a post which has this great title: Vonage: Worst IPO Candidate This Year? Alex thinks that the fundamental problem with Vonage is that the company has to keep shelling out more money to get increasingly smaller revenues. In other words, Vonage is caught in a situation where its costs are rising and the price of its product is dropping.
If the price goes to zero, usage should skyrocket. If usage skyrockets, then the costs associated with running the network also rise. Cost basis increasing, revenue decreasing… does this sound like an IPO to you? Not on your life!
With these kind of woes, is it any surprise that Vonage, as Mark Evans points out, has bailed on VON Canada, a particularly telling sign given that VON’s chief Jeff Pulver is a co-founder of Vonage? It’s interesting, too, that Niklas Zennstrom, slated to be a keynote speaker at VON Canada, has also pulled out, sending one of his VPs instead.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:24 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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