copying/quoting/Wikipedia/cross-examination ... & a whole new topic, drawers

Sun Apr 27 20:58:05 UTC 2008

Lee Storm wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36138>:

<< And, as an aside, I've looked at almost 200 articles which all seem
to have the same text within them. Hmm--who was *really* the
originator? >>

When you find the same article in hundreds of newspapers, it probably
came from a wire service, and should be bylined 'AP -' or 'Reuters -'
or 'Press Trust of India - ' or whatever. Once I glanced through a
copy of L.A. DAILY NEWS and found that all its non-local articles said
'from the New York TIMES' at the bottom. There's no infringement
because the wire services (and apparently the NYT) are in the
*business* of providing articles to be published by their paying
subscribers. The subscribers chop off the bottom of the article to
save paper, in some cases running only the first paragraph of a very
long article. 

In middle school, we were taught that journalists must write in an
'inverse pyramid' form, with the most important thing in the first
sentence, the second most important thing in the second sentence, and
so on, because papers have always cut from the bottom up rather than
by actually reading the material. So the wire services know very well
that this is going to happen to their articles, so I don't suppose
their feelings are hurt by it. 

But my feelings have been hurt on their behalf sometimes when I have
seen some rag print the first paragraph of a story plus one sentence
of their own, thus giving the impression that the story was written by
an ignorant idiot, and then I went on-line and read the whole wire
service article and it was excellent and admirable.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this list's extensive
discussion of copyright and plagiarism is quoting part of a person's
statement, with citation, in such a way as to make the person look
like an idiot. I think that's more hurtful to the victim and, if
intentional, more evil of the perpetrator, than the so-called
plagiarism of -- I'm too out of touch with modern culture to use a
non-obsolete example -- saying 'Where's the beef?' without saying 'In
the words of the TV commercial'.

Carol wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36207>:

<< Are not the spoo "facts" the property of the series' creator? Is
Wikipedia not infringing his copyright merely by retelling them? >>

I'm sure Wikipedia is full of infringements of copyrights, and that
they don't cost the copyright owners any money. The only way that
reading about Spoo in Wikipedia would prevent a person from buying B5
DVDs is if the person had never been inclined to buy them in the first
place. A person looks up Spoo because either they read the word
somewhere and want to know what it is, or maybe they're a fan who is
trying to explain Spoo to a Muggle.

No decent person would sue Wikipedia. There was that man who sued
Wikipedia because an article said he was one of the suspected
conspirators in the JFK assassination. That is all I know about him,
and all I need to know about him to know that he is not a decent
person. Problems with Wikipedia (that it defames you, or even
publishes your trade secret) should be dealt with through Wikipedia's
mechanisms. Having a problem with Wikipedia that they infringe your
copyright should be dealt with by authorizing them to use your
copyrighted material with an acknowledgment. You can insert the
acknowledgment yourself.

Alla wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36225>:

<< But no amount of forceful cross-examination will make witness say
something that witness did not DO. >>

Unfortunately, that's not always true. As you probably know, many
children have been trained to always agree with anything said by an
angry authority figure (and a forceful adult seems like an angry
authority figure) because contradicting them will earn a spanking or
being sent to bed without supper or whatever punishments are used
nowadays, either for 'lying' or for disrespecting an adult.

I know you only meant cross-examination of adults, but many adults can
be intimidated as easily as children into agreeing with anything said
by a scary person in a suit. I believe this is especially true of
people with some kinds of mental retardation or mental illness. But,
you know, extreme timidity is not generally viewed as a mental illness.

And I'm pretty sure, that I, at least, can be confused into saying
something that isn't true. I wish I could remember some specific
examples, but all I remember is having had to say to an intimidating
boss, 'no... let me start over'. Y'know, like, the reason I didn't
phone the Help Desk is the first I knew of the problem was when the
Help Desk phoned me.   

Potioncat wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36240>:

<< And do you keep trousers in a chest of drawers? >>

I grinned at Carol's comment, but yours reminded me of an embarrassing
moment. A male friend had hidden my Slinky in his apartment and I was
searching for it. While I was looking in all the drawers of his
dresser, a third party saw me and (jokingly) accused me of looking at
Dan's underwear. "I'm not looking at his underwear, I'm just searching
his drawers." Oops!