...or memorex?

August 3, 2005 8:55 PM

FHM rips off Music Thing blog.Compare and contrast. Fair use or a plain old fashioned rip-off? You make the call. Seriously, how common is this kind of thing and is the net producing content to be repackaged and sold commercially without proper permission?
posted by skallas (25 comments total)

Rips off? You mean, wrote an article similar to the article on the website?

Seriously, how common is this kind of thing and is the net producing content to be repackaged and sold commercially without proper permission?

Proper permission? You mean, you think you need to ask permission before retelling something you learned elsewhere?
posted by delmoi at 9:35 PM on August 3, 2005

what delmoi said, unless the two sites were maybe a lot more similar when this was posted?
posted by RichAromas at 10:03 PM on August 3, 2005

This is interesting, plus lots of links to follow - thanks.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 10:30 PM on August 3, 2005

Now this is a music blog (warning: self-link)

If you ever read any of the music reviews in FHM, Stuff, Maxim, etc., they're all full of crap. I'm not surprised by this at all, but unless it's straight plaigirizing, you can't blame them for repackaging a fun idea. Whatever happened to "imitation is the biggest form of flattery"?
posted by Mach3avelli at 10:41 PM on August 3, 2005

Not much in the way of attribution, but in tiny type in the gutter it does direct readers to musicthing.blogspot.com for more info.
posted by O9scar at 10:45 PM on August 3, 2005

The article on Musicthing is pretty cool. Would have made a fine post on its own.

The plagiarism angle just ain't that interesting.
posted by sellout at 11:30 PM on August 3, 2005

Mach3avelli: Well, music thing is more about producing music then listening too it.

But yeah, retelling something you learned is not plagerism, and it never has been.
posted by delmoi at 12:05 AM on August 4, 2005

Did you people actually read the article!? The channel 4 section has been lifted word for word by fhm. That's just outrageous! What a lazy journalist.

Really good article though, good post.
posted by derbs at 4:14 AM on August 4, 2005

That's just outrageous!

Is it... really? I'll tell you what's outrageous, 40+ bucks to fill up a 4-cylinder vehicle.
posted by Necker at 4:52 AM on August 4, 2005

as a regular contributer to music thing, im glad that its getting the attention.

necker: Ill tell you whats outrageous...complaining about the price of petrol....get a bicycle
posted by walkerbelm at 5:09 AM on August 4, 2005 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ahhh... problem solved. Knucklehead.
posted by Necker at 5:15 AM on August 4, 2005

yeah, sorry you'd probably need to lose some weight first.
posted by walkerbelm at 5:44 AM on August 4, 2005

sorry
posted by walkerbelm at 5:51 AM on August 4, 2005

I had respect for Music Thing before walkerbelm showed up.
posted by Jairus at 5:55 AM on August 4, 2005

Yeah, several paragraphs are lifted word for word, others have the word order or phrasing slightly shuffled, but are still substantially similar. From what I know of copyright law (a bit), they could probably sue FHM for this.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:14 AM on August 4, 2005

Thanks for this post. I don't see why the FHM plagiarism is being downplayed.

Back in school if one got caught doing such a thing the penalty was pretty severe. I guess this is yet another example of how school does not correlate to the real world. **scratches head, wanders off**
posted by tweak at 6:17 AM on August 4, 2005

in tiny type in the gutter it does direct readers to musicthing.blogspot.com for more info.

That's how mags do attribution these days? Wow. I know it's FHM and all, but this isn't "retelling" or "repackaging" something they read elsewhere; the piece is a clear rip-off. It should have mentioned Music Thing clearly at the start. Cool original, though, and from a blog that looks really great. I mean, Mr. Fastfinger's Guitar Shred Show?

Thanks, skallas.
posted by mediareport at 7:04 AM on August 4, 2005

Well, I didn't read the whole article, and I couldn't find the full text of the other sections on music thing. If this was from a "respectable" paper like the NYT or something, the author would surely be fired.

That said, what this guy did isn't that diffrent from what a lot of collage students do. My mom caught a plagerist once because one student 'rewrote' an essay, and another copied it wholesale. If it haddn't been for the rewriter, my mom wouldn't have even noticed if it haddn't been for the rewriter.
posted by delmoi at 7:21 AM on August 4, 2005

At first I thought this post was about design hijacking, just because the graphics are a bit similar.... but now that I read the article(s) I see what you're talking about. Yep -- obviously the FHM writer just lifted it straight from the website, and switched around a few words. That is wrong. That is bad. That shouldn't be pooh-poohed. It isn't a case of "retelling something you learned," it is a case of copyright infringement, plain and simple. Now, as far as I can tell, both parties are in the UK, and I don't know how the law works there. But if they were in the US, the website author would most definitely have a case against the magazine. He would have an even stronger case if he had a copyright mark somewhere on his website, which I looked for but couldn't find.

Anyway, those of you who don't think this is a big deal, consider: writers like the FHM dude are typically paid per word for their work. The writer in this case simply copied someone elses words, changed a few of them around, and sold them to the magazine as his own. So in the end he was paid for someone elses idea, someone elses research, and someone elses composition. You think that's OK? And no, a URL in tiny type in the gutter is not sufficient attribution. The website owner should have gotten the byline, and he also should have gotten the check.
posted by spilon at 7:24 AM on August 4, 2005

I couldn't find the full text of the other sections on music thing

Yeah, it's a bit unclear - an artifact of using a series of blog entries, which probably isn't the best way to present a longer essay like this. Once it was done, they should have gone back and added links to all of the parts to the first post in the series, instead of forcing us to click through page by page to get to the later bits.
posted by mediareport at 7:45 AM on August 4, 2005

delmoi: what this guy did isn't that diffrent from what a lot of collage students do

Well, collages are supposed to be about reusing bits and pieces of other works, so that's not so surprising.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:39 AM on August 4, 2005

Isn't it possible that Music Thing licensed its content to FHM? When two things are this similar--and then a web address granting attribution to the original site is printed on the same page--it suggests not plagarism, but syndication.

If Maxim or FHM or one of the other ladmags came to you and said, "we want to pay you some amount for your content," even if it's only like, say, 40 pounds, would you say no?
posted by thecaddy at 9:08 AM on August 4, 2005

This reminds me of how Entertainment Weekly reprinted content taken from our website (on a regular basis, for more than a year), without so much as citing or acknowledging us as a source of the information.

Does this "retelling" argument really apply when speaking about large media outlets, such as a national magazine, publishing content and information they didn't originate without crediting the source?

I wonder if we have a case against EW.
posted by jca at 9:20 AM on August 4, 2005

Seriously, how common is this kind of thing and is the net producing content to be repackaged and sold commercially without proper permission?

Quite common, and yes absolutely.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:55 AM on August 4, 2005

jca As a regular reader of EW I must ask, what section was ripping you off? Oh, and what is the name of your website?
posted by haqspan at 12:24 PM on August 4, 2005