Pressure Rises On German Science Minister In Plagiarism Scandal 130
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's minister for science and education, who is currently under investigation by her alma mater for plagiarizing parts of her Ph.D thesis, is facing new accusations: a total of 92 alleged incidents of plagiarism (German) have been documented by a blogger, who calls 'this number of violations inexcusable.'"
Re:Achtung Schweinhund! (Score:4, Funny)
Wenn ist das Nunnstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
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I showed this to a German friend of mine and he died - is that normal?
No fun (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
Re:No fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Plagiarism does seem to be getting more and more common, with people getting ever more casual about it. When I was at University in the 90s, there were a small number of students caught engaging in plagiarism. If it was felt to be deliberate, it was basically immediate expulsion. If it was more likely to be carelessness or ignorance of proper academic processes, the consequences were still severe (being made to redo substantial chunks of work).
Speaking a couple of months ago to a niece who's now at University, I was told that around a third of the students in her year for her subject had been caught copying material from the net. The response, a few sessions where they were sat down and told "Plagiarism is bad, mkay".
I came across a hilarious example of (non academic) plagiarism a couple of months ago, while sifting a pile of job applications.
This was the first sift and I had a pile of about 50 in front of me (which I was aiming to get down to about 15 or so by weeding out the obvious no-hopers). We had three other people sitting down with a similar pile (200 applications for 2 posts - this has been the norm for us over the last couple of years - I guess the job market is a scary place right now).
Anyway, I'm only being fairly cursory about it, but even so, I spot that three of the applications seem to use the exact same stock few (clumsy, badly worded) paragraphs. I tap the first line of one of these paragraphs into google and the first hit is a "how to write a job application" site. A very poorly put together site (think site design that dates from the circa 1998 geocities era), written by somebody whose first language is probably not English. The paragraphs in question aren't even particularly relevant to our job application form (which is fairly specific and focussed).
A quick e-mail around to the other people on the panel turns up a total of 6 forms which use text from that site. Clearly it had somehow managed to get a high ranking for a few of the relevant search terms. But seriously, you're competing against hundreds of other people and you decide to use material you've copy/pasted from something that is only one step away from having animated gifs of dancing cats? Unless said site had itself plagiarised its content from somewhere else, of course..
Re:No fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Plagiarism does seem to be getting more and more common, with people getting ever more casual about it. When I was at University in the 90s, there were a small number of students caught engaging in plagiarism.
Are you sure plagiarism rates are increasing? Maybe it's simply that these days, with everything being digital, it is way easier to uncover plagiarism. I wonder what would happen if one was able to digitize the scientific literature of the last 100 years and then started plagiarism checking Phd. thesis from the same period with a computer.
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That or perhaps the many eyes of the Internet, bloggers, anonymous Wikileakers, etc. Maybe we can call it opensource journalism or at best the start of opensource government (ex. the anti-ACTA movement).
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I get tasked with reviewing resumes, too. Sometimes I'm completely baffled as to what someone was thinking when they wrote it. I've never seen one that was obviously lifted from an online template, though. Most people are simply not trained on how to write a good resume, and they don't want to take the time to learn--they want someone else to have done the work for them.
As for cheating, it does seem like cheating is on the rise among students. Part of it is that it's easier now than it ever was in the past.
Re:No fun (Score:5, Funny)
I have been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I am still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
Re:No fun (Score:5, Funny)
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I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
I've had a student in a class plagiarize my own articles back at me. In retrospect it was both funny and sad, but at the time I was very exasperated that they could be that stupid. No, they didn't get a pass in the class. Nor did they get an opportunity to retake; their original work was even worse too, so much so that if they're reading here, I'd advise them to keep on plagiarizing instead of trying to have original thoughts.
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I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
I've had a student in a class plagiarize my own articles back at me. In retrospect it was both funny and sad, but at the time I was very exasperated that they could be that stupid. No, they didn't get a pass in the class. Nor did they get an opportunity to retake; their original work was even worse too, so much so that if they're reading here, I'd advise them to keep on plagiarizing instead of trying to have original thoughts.
It could have been even funnier if one of your colleagues marked it without realising before you saw it!
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It could have been even funnier if one of your colleagues marked it without realising before you saw it!
To be honest, I forget whether it was myself or one of my colleagues who first saw this paper. The plagiarism was really obvious; it was a truly incompetent hack job that cribbed without citation from quite a few important papers in the field, and the student didn't even bother to make the formatting styles consistent. The indentation and font changed between paragraphs. Anyone knowledgeable enough to mark the subject on which the paper was supposed to be would have given similar marks.
But the big fat zero
Make that twice! (Score:2)
I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.
(Make that twice)
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Yesss!!! It does not matter that public is deceived by a plagiarist. It does not matter that plagiarist is given credit and authority based on things he copied from somewhere else! It does not matter that real author is deprived of recognition for his work.
It's about FEEEEEEELings!
Please kill all your friends, then yourself.
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Please kill all your friends, then yourself.
Dude, that is not cool.
It's kill all your relatives, not friends.
She should step down. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, what example does that set that your Minister for Science and Education is a cheat?
Go Germany!!!!!!
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They're politicians, if you take them as an example for anything except being amoral scum you're doing it wrong.
Re:She should step down. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no. In fact, the supreme court found that the rules that were in place before the election were unconstitutional. In particular, the rules regarding recounts were unconstitutional because there was no statewide standard for counting ballots, and thus ballots could be counted differently in different counties. This, the Supremes ruled, was a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
Those counting rules were in place prior to the election, but the SCOTUS ruled that the recount had to be stopped because (in part) of this violation. The other part was that putting a statewide standard in place would take too long, and would prevent certification of the vote in time to meet the mandated date that certification was required (December 12th, which was also the date of the decision).
Basically, it was all a huge cluster fuck, with conflicting rulings, laws, standards, etc.. In fact, because the counting process was ruled to be in violation of the 14th amendment, SCOTUS should have ruled that the original count was not valid as well, and forced the SCOFL to mandate a standard and then do a full recount by that standard. That way, the rules in effect prior to the legitimate count would have been the same as after the legitimate count.
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Gore lost. Get over it.
The Supreme Court ruled that the vote would stand and that Democrats couldn't keep requesting recounts and trying to change votes.
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I'm not contesting that Bush turned out to be the rightful winner in the end, but both sides did use a lot of dirty tricks to make the decision go their way.
State of the question (Score:1, Insightful)
As an university teacher once told me: Copy from 1 is plagiarism, from 5 is an analysis, from 92 is summarizing the state of the question
Re:State of the question (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, but fundamentally wrong. Copy and give credit = standard scientific proceeding. Copy and say it's yours = plagitism. It quite easy, really.
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Well, if something is generally known to experts in the field, there's no need to give credit; everyone already knows who discovered it and won't believe it's you.
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Thank you!
I spent two months of my PhD, first trying to find an elusive proof for an obscure bit of math that I needed, that, according to the papers on the topic, was "available in the litterature", and then, after I finally gave it up, I painfully reconstructed the proof.
"Available in the litterature" ticks me off, almost as much as "... from this, it is easily seen that ...".
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I guess I was a bit vague -- I was thinking of things that were discovered decades ago and considered standard tools by now. For example, when you write a physics paper, you don't need to explain where you get the laws of motion and mechanics from. Or when you write a paper on molecular biology, you don't need to mention who discovered the structure of DNA.
Anyway, I get your point.
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Well, if something is generally known to experts in the field, there's no need to give credit; everyone already knows who discovered it and won't believe it's you.
It's safer to err on the side of precaution. Why risk being called a plagiarist when all that's needed to avoid trouble is to change from this:
Blah blah blah blah.
To this:
"Blah blah bah blah." (Author, "Title", p. Page)
?
My guess is that most plagiarism out there is more a case of laziness than of anything else.
Hmm... perhaps there's an unexplored market out there for auto-quoting services for lazy researches, who knows? Submit your unpublished paper, get all unintentional plagiarisms marked for review, click a button and have them turned into proper quotations in any style
Science?!? (Score:1)
Schavan received her doctorate in educational science in 1980 from the University of Düsseldorf; her dissertation was entitled: "Person and conscience—Studies on conditions, need and requirements of today's consciences.
This isn't science anyway, just brabra like most lawyers write about...
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Which is why I find most of these scandals pointless. Her PhD is worthless regardless whether she copied it or not.
Not tolerable in this level (Score:1)
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Yeah and the first time it happened the politicians were the only ones who thought it wasn't a big deal. Guess this is the reason why.
As Tom Lehrer would put it (Score:1)
Seems to become a national hobby... (Score:5, Informative)
... after Mr Guttenberg had to quit as Defence Minister because of plagiarism, it seems to have become a sport [wikipedia.org] to topple politicians this way. It's a fun thing to watch.
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Just as it became customary for politicians to get a PhD and a fancy "Dr." to the name, a part of the public has decided to read their theses. This is how a democracy works.
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I find it particularly entertaining because Germany seems reluctant to recognize foreign doctorates -- i.e. if you got your PhD outside Germany, you may not be allowed to call yourself "Dr.". The implication is that a German PhD is somehow intrinsically superior. The politicians seem to be doing a good job in dragging down the superior branding.
Maybe this explains the "Dr. Dr. Dr."s and "Dr. mult"s I've heard about: writing three PhDs is probably easier if you're copy-pasting :-).
No actual plagiarism (Score:4, Informative)
This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus. It's a desperate plot by political enemies against the minister.
For example, the first instance of alleged plagiarism is the following text:
Schavan's thesis:
Dabei haben sich – vergröbernd dargestellt – zwei unterschiedliche Verhältnisbestimmungen herauskristallisiert: [...]
Allegedly plagiarised text:
Er hat nachgewiesen, daß jedes Tier mit seiner artspezifischen Umwelt in einem Funktionskreis verbunden existiert.
Even if you don't understand German, it should be obvious that no text has been copied. The accusators of schavanplag call this "concealed" plagiarizing. There would be some truth to this if Schavan had actually known the source and paraphrased the text without citing. It is, however, equally likely that she had just came to the same conclusions based on the same sources.
Some minor quality problems have been found, too. For example, some citations contain typos. While that should not happen, it's far from plagiarism. (Furthermore, the thesis was published in 1980. Without computers, it's much harder to avoid such errors.)
Re:No actual plagiarism (Score:4, Funny)
This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus.
Do you have a reference to this?
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This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus.
Do you have a reference to this?
He doesn't because this is wrong as well. The news is that the amount of plagiarism that had been detected has increased substantially since the original accusations. And even back then, several leading experts on plagiarism talked of "grave scientific misconduct", "scientifically worthless work", "suffcient for revoking her degree" [spiegel.de].
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While that particular passage is very, very far from plagiarism, there are others that are a bit closer. A quick check did not yield any verbatim copies, though.
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You are still lying by severly distorting the facts and taking things out of context. On the page you mention, Schavan obviously paraphrased the source without giving any attribution, including literal copying of the phrases "unüberbrückbare Kluft", "unter Naturzwang stehendes Tier", "gradueller Unterschied". While this might not count as criminal copyright infringement, it is still a violation of established scientific practice, and thus has no place in a PhD thesis.
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The Germans are self-policing... (Score:5, Insightful)
... as shown by the website here: http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/Home/English [wikia.com]
As an academic who earned a PhD in the US and worked as faculty in Sweden and now Germany, you're being quite naïve if you don't think this happens in every country including the US. The difference is that the Germans self-police (in standard volunteer wiki-style), while the US and Sweden do not, to my knowledge.
As far as it being a "sport", that's ridiculous. Being that we (Germany's inhabitants) take titles very seriously, with good reason, as the Chancellor has a doctorate in Quantum Chemistry, every thesis should be thoroughly scrutinized.
I would wager my degrees that the percentage of pages plagiarized are very similar between the US, Sweden and Germany. We just find the plagiarism over here and hold politicians (and all others) accountable.
Here are the "overall statisctics"... (Score:2)
http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht
The graphics at the bottom clearly translate for a non-German audience ... as do the lines through the "type" of doctoral degree directly above the graphic.
For a non-German perspective, I now see how someone could perhaps see this "as sport" as nothing like this has happened anywhere else to my knowledge (and definitely not in the US, where you'd probably be DCMA'd or immediately sued for slander).
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Re:The Germans are self-policing... (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that the Germans self-police (in standard volunteer wiki-style), while the US and Sweden do not, to my knowledge.
Even in Germany, this is quite new, and only started when one infamous dazzler (who I'm not going to name because it would only improve his Google rankings) was uncovered, denied everything and went on the offensive as PR experts tell you to do in such cases - except that the Internet geeks banded together and ripped his PhD thesis apart page-by-page showing massive abuse so much that he not only lost his PhD but also had criminal investigations for copyright violations launched against him and public pressure forced him to give up all his political positions.
He's since twice tried a comeback, both times the public made it clear that we don't like liars and fraudsters.
That was a part of recent history that makes me proud, but it is very recent history.
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Sure, it's a new phenomenon.
But you must admit that the time between the technology being available (all dissertations being publicly available in electronic PDF form and OCR being widely implementable, the wiki framework for crowd-sourcing a problem, and the media being willing to really hang a prominent member of a prominent noble family out to dry) and the rise of self-policing websites has been extremely fast.
Also, he has 12 names plus a von and zu trailer. That alone would prevent me from typing his n
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So, you are a legal expert in german copyright laws?
No?
Thought so.
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Has got nothing to do with the chancellor having a doctorate in quantum chemistry. She has supported the fraudster Guttenberg as long as it was possible.
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That seems odd, especially from younger engineers. In Germany, co-workers in a business situation go by "du" and first-names very quickly; certainly as soon as they are working on a project together. This is even true for geezers like me (far side of 50). It's just not completely automatic, like in English.
In English *everybody* is on a first-name basis, which is extreme in the other direction. When you first meet someone, why should you immediately pretend to be friends? Especially if one of you is in a po
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"In California, I had two German coworkers. Everybody from CEO down went by the first name."
Were their firstnames 'Doktor'?
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No, their names were "Herr"
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If you have a couple of identical phrases, that's no big deal. When you have pages and pages of such phrases, it indicates a problem. Identical phrases happen by coincidence, but it is surprisingly rare.
I check my students' work regularly for plagiarism. If you use a bit of sense, and pick out a phrase that contains specifics but is not standard (i.e, not "the fourth amendment"), you almost *never* find an exact match.
Here's a negative example: take the first sentence of the previous paragraph: "I check my
Just a nutcase blogger with a grudge? (Score:2)
I have yet to see even one example of plagiarism among the 92 examples given. The blogger seems unable to understand that it is common academic praxis to sum up e.g. a theory from a work. Of course such a summery will bear some resemblance to the original work, otherwise it wouldn't be a summery. But as long as there are good footnotes documenting this, it isn't a problem.
One could in fact argue, that since the blogger doesn't seem to have found even one good clear case of plagiarism, the dissertation comes
Doesn't matter. (Score:2)
Got rich.
"Fake it until you make it" will beat honest work every time.
Fictitious degrees (Score:1)
In addition to plagarized theses, there are a lot of completely fictitious degrees being flaunted.
A few years ago a senior MIT administrator had to resign.
Last year there was the CEO of a tech company.
About 30 years ago, the President of the IEEE claimed to have a doctorate from a minor German university, but no one could find any record of it. However, his friends rallied around, and he was given an honorary doctorate.
Then there are the unaccredited doctorates. E.g., when Ryerson Polytechnic In
Most original content has been used up, so.... (Score:2)
...find another metric than a thesis to award doctorates, but give "extra credit" for OC.
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The Pirate Party is actually clear that they want to retain the creator's right to attribution. It's only the economic rights they want to abolish.
Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Pirate Party is actually clear that they want to retain the creator's right to attribution. It's only the economic rights they want to abolish.
The problem being that the creators sustain them selves by the same economic rights the pirates want to abolish.
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Yeah, and I might sustain myself with a right granted to me by law that forces everyone to give me a few dollars every so often for no reason at all. I mean, sure, authors think of new material, but the mere fact that that's the only way they know how to sustain themselves doesn't justify such freedom-violating laws. Find a business model or die.
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Find a business model or die.
It is nice to have writers because we like to read books. If there is no business model that allows people to work as full-time authors, then it's not just the would-be authors who suffer.
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Find a business model or die.
It is nice to have writers because we like to read books. If there is no business model that allows people to work as full-time authors, then it's not just the would-be authors who suffer.
I'm generally a political lefty but the idea that content creators are supposed to work, essentially for free, so that pirates can enjoy their material is naive and economically unworkable. This anarchistic/socialistic idea of entire professions working for the common good of the community without recompense has been tested an re-tested since before the Spanish civil war and found not to work any more than rampant rapacious capitalism has. It's a bit like those far left wing types that want to confiscate al
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software developers are supposed to make money in a world where they can't charge people for software licenses.
Well, as a software engineer, I can answer this one: People pay you to solve problems. Generally they hire you to do so, but I've seen a lot of consultant/contractors do the mercenary thing.
At some of the places I worked, they would be perfectly fine if was open sourced afterwards, as long as they could still use it to solve their problem. Other places, the source was a national secret. But in both, there was a problem, they needed some software to solve it, and they paid me to git'er'done.
There are, in
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The best ideas I have yet heard from our pirate friends is that musicians would be doomed to a lifetime of concert touring, writers to charging for access to book readings, filmmakers to deriving revenues from movie theaters and nobody has yet adequately explained to me how software developers are supposed to make money in a world where they can't charge people for software licenses.
But that's exactly how most musicians, writers and programmers earn their living today.
Most musicians derive the majority of their income from concerts and merchandise. It's only the stars that get significant income from album sales.
The vast majority of writers derive the majority of their income from writing-related jobs, such s teaching, workshops and journalism -- if they don't just have a day job.
The vast majority of programmers work with writing custom software for a specific customer, and get paid di
Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in that case, you can make the same statement to book buyers: Find a funding model, or die. (Although it's not quite that bad, fortunately).
But there is no lack of other potential funding models. The main difficulty, both for authors and readers, is that we aren't used to these other funding models, and thus we're confused by them, scared by them, and unable to take full advantage of them.
Right now something exciting is happening, as Kickstarter is gradually, slowly, wrapping people's minds around the idea that you can approach creative projects as a investments/ventures for non monetary gain.
Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I have a research position at a university. I get paid to write scientifical papers that are then available for everyone to download on my website. Why would the same thing be inconceivable for musicians?
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You doubt that content creators can be compensated by any other system? Really?
Universities use a form of patronage. It has its problems-- for instance, the notorious Publish or Perish pressure pushes researchers towards quantity rather than quality-- but it does produce research. And it is not welfare, nor is it for those of poor skill, quite the opposite. We need some place for deep thinkers to work, and business is poor at providing a suitable environment for that.
The academic model would be terrible for private business
Would it? How do you know that?
Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:4, Interesting)
And it is not welfare, nor is it for those of poor skill, quite the opposite.
Sorry, I must not have phrased what I was saying clearly. I'm not trying to compare researchers at universities to welfare recipients; I was trying to point out that state-funded artists and content producers would essentially be just that.
And do not talk as if currently used business models are the best we can do
No, they clearly aren't. But the ability for content producers to sell and distribute content digitally is removing much of the need for big business there. With that type of model, an artist or producer's ability to sustain that career is completely dependent on whether or not consumers appreciate his/her work enough to pay for it. If you aren't producing anything of worth, why should you be supported in doing so?
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I get paid to write scientifical papers...
Scientifical?
I wonder if anyone reads them.
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Sigh. I hope you are pretty young to have written such a reply.
Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
And those rights also sustain some grandchildren of the creators. The world needs some IP rights, but they are completely out of control right now. So if any negotiations are to be balanced, the anti-IP side has to start with wanting to abolish IP altogether, since the pro-IP side wants to extend it to eternity.
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The problem being that the creators sustain them selves by the same economic rights the pirates want to abolish.
That's another discussion, but here goes: Creators can earn money without copyright.
For example, a lot of music artists have discovered that they earn roughly the same amount of money by putting up their music on the Internet for free, and selling signed copies, merchandise, extra material, and so on. A lot of people are prepared to pay because they want to support the band, they have the cash and can't be bothered to find the material on a filesharing network, or they want to be sure they get the best qual
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Right, like I pay the painter who painted the crossroads every time I cross the street?
That's just a plain stupid analogy.
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Re:Oh who gives a fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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The experimental method, for example, empiricism, skepticism, many basic classificatory schemes, and actually even the groundwork for modern discoveries such as the atom.
I read this thrice, and I am pretty sure there is a verb or two missing in the statement.
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My thought exactly.
My other thought was: How can you possibly determine that plagiarisation has been taking place while comparing two creations of fluff like these.. reminds me of the guy who wrote a bot that could write dissertations. Very few of the proofreaders actually realized that it was all just fake as the bot was very adept att using "big" words and vague concepts..
I wonder for how long our train-wreck of an economy (ie: the west) will be sufficiently strong to be able to support this kind of total
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