The important thing to remember here is that Steyn is a snaggletoothed chickenfucker.
I'm pretty sure, from the way he writes those posts, that Pullum thinks Steyn is plagiarising too.
It's pretty cut-and-dried, really. The title of one of Pullum's posts shows up, unquoted, as a line in Steyn's article. Steyn later quotes Pullum on something else, making it clear he's read the post. And when it's pointed out, Steyn's people threaten lawsuit.
Game, set, and match.
I hope that, in addition to the court of public opinion, the Language Log guys are also taking their case to Steyn's editor at MacLean's.
Liberman wrote, "Steyn's assistant responded (and I paraphrase rather than quoting here) >"
goddamn frenchie-style quotes.
Let's try that again.
Liberman wrote:
Steyn's assistant responded (and I paraphrase rather than quoting here) "Steyn did nothing wrong -- see you in court if you dare to take this further. "
I had a plagiarism case like this a few years ago. No word-for-word, but the student's line of argument & structure exactly mirrored an article from Analysis. Oddly, the student didn't see the problem, but the dean did.
7 - That's totally common in computer science departments. We got at least 2 plagiarism cases a semester where students would claim that it didn't count because they did a search-and-replace on the copied program's variable names before turning it in. Besides getting a zero, I always thought that at a minimum they should have to write me a 5-page paper on why this is bullshit as punishment.
On why alpha-conversion is bullshit?
When I TA'ed CS courses, we used to catch (some) cheaters by including extra-whitespace in the code from the course-notes, then check for that whitespace in the code turned in.
It still amazes me how often that worked...
Well, Steyn is Canadian, after all. Probably it's just, you know, a cultural thing.
10 - Why alpha-conversions prove that (replacing the variable names == new program) is bullshit.
shouldn't that be: "Snaggletooth Chickenfucker Mark Steyn's occupation is the important thing to remember here"?
To plagiarize is to plagiarize by renaming variables.
To plagiarize is to plagiarize by renaming variables.
It does kinda raise the question, of course, what kinds of substitutions and abstractions *are* sufficient for differentiating your code from someone elses, right?
I was being sort of a tool when I asked the original question -- sorry.
Can one write simple data structures like stack and linked list and the routines for manipulating them without plagiarizing? I don't think it can be done. Lord knows many of the core routines in my code were plagiarized years ago from my data structures textbook (and converted from pseudocode to C) and I've been using them ever since.
well, it would be nice if [Mark Steyn] acquired another connotation.
Is copying code plagarism outside of an academic context? I know that copying legal briefs isn't -- the drafting process for legal briefs often involves wholesale copying of chunks of other people's previously filed work, and this isn't remotely considered improper. There is no requirement that a brief be original, only that it be accurate and persuasive.
I'd expect that code is the same, barring actual copyright issues.
21: I don't really think so, that "wholesale copyiong of chunks" of other people's code is considered even remotely acceptable. Basically, I think coders treat their work as others might treat their own novel/essay/whatever. One exception to this is probably the corporate software development environment, which is naturally a collaborative one (or should be), and has different/blurred lines of personal code ownership. Another exception is the case of "open source," which (usually) means something along the lines of, "You may use this as you wish." But open-sourcing something is a conscious choice a coder makes, not something that is usually assumed or implied.
Of course, at this point there should probably be a real distinction made between the "code" or "program" that does something, and the "algorithm" which is encoded by that program.
The former: not cool to copy, without permission/credit.
The latter: much more like a mathematical theorem, and therefore much more acceptable to simply reuse (modulo dumb-ass patent issues, of course).
We share code with sources within the company all the time. In order to copy chunks of code from the internet or other external sources, we have to verify the type of license under which they are distributed. The author either has to give permission or it has to be open-sourced in a way that allows for us to use it for commercial development. Some open-source/freeware licenses are considered "infectious", meaning that any derivative works have to be licensed under the same terms. So, if we used one of those components in a product for a client, we could get in trouble.
I think that if I wrote a linked list library, it wouldn't be plagiarism, even if it happened to correspond exactly to someone else's published code, because the correspondence wouldn't have come about in the right way.
See, two good, skilled programmers who are writing two separate linked list libraries might produce code that is almost identical.
Two students in an intro to data structures class writing their first linked list ever? They'll produce code that looks nothing alike.
Partly that's a function of the "if I wrote" part of what you said, though... and the difference (although it can get blurred at times) between linked list "code" and the "algorithm" that that code implements.
There are only so many ways to insert, delete, and walk through a list after all...
But if someone had, for some reason, patented the algorithms for doing that, then that'd be a different matter no matter who wrote the code. IANAPL, but I think that's right.
Clearly, there are different standards of plagiarism in different contexts. When I was writing those professional biographies for T/he C/ritic/al T/radit/ion, I borrowed a few phrasings here and there from Wikipedia and Contemporary Authors. Nothing that would count as plagiarism, most likely, but also not, like, original arguments about the authors' oeuvres. Would it even matter in that case, in which the rhetorical purpose is to give stock info in a generic way? Probably not, as it doesn't matter in legal briefs or in standard code.
But in an article in which the author, who is often praised for his clever turns of phrase and witty, original observations, takes both his turns of phrase and observations from another writer without properly giving credit, I'd say there's a serious problem going on. It might be ridiculous to hold every instance of creation to those standards, but it's not ridiculous in this case.
Clarification: I do not think [Mark Steyn] is witty or clever, but apparently there are those who do, since LL quotes bloggers praising said wit.
I used to have a writing assignment in the first week that was in part a plagiarism trap -- I'd reccommend sources for the paper and then do some spot checking. It was worth five points. Invariably, I caught a handfful of people. They got zeros, the class got an object lesson and it had a very good deterrent effect. It was the student who managed to then go on to plagiarize his term paper after being busted that I took to the dean.
I used to have a writing assignment in the first week that was in part a plagiarism trap -- I'd reccommend sources for the paper and then do some spot checking. It was worth five points. Invariably, I caught a handfful of people. They got zeros, the class got an object lesson and it had a very good deterrent effect. It was the student who managed to then go on to plagiarize his term paper after being busted that I took to the dean.
Hm, Benton, that sounds like rather a good idea....
Plagiarizing yourself doesn't count standpipe, and it doesn't even draw a crowd when you do it in the Mineshaft.
Sure. The specifics were that they had to write a bio of an elected official (I taught American Gov).
And, because I felt slightly icky (just slightly) about the entrapment element of this scheme, I offered a chance at redemption. They could do a more challenging term paper that replaced both the regular term paper and the grade for their bio assignment. Kind of double or nothing.
I don't imagine I'll feel icky about it at all. They know they shouldn't cheat; if they do, they deserve to get caught.
I'm overly Catholic about some things. Its something I'm working on getting over.
Weird. I'm Catholic, and I don't feel at all guilty about failing students. Maybe it's a girl thing, like Catholic school nuns.
A friend of mine told me that his university subscribes to a service that screens work for plagiarism. Students don't hand their essays in to the prof; they email them to this company, which then forwards them to the instructor with a report that estimates what percentage of the work is original content.
Same friend years ago dinged a student for plagiarism: the student had handed in a paper on liberalism or some such that featured repeated references to "Chinamen."
The Chinaman is not the issue here.
Asian-American, please.
Weird. I'm Catholic, and I don't feel at all guilty
Catholicism is a handy catch-all explanation for all strange tendencies and personal failings, to be used indiscriminately, and possibly in contradictory fashion, on a regular basis. Bad form to imply that being Catholic has nothing to do with it.
Clearly, the Catholics are living in the past...
(2000 years of glorious history...)