Waldo Jaquith of The Virginia Quarterly has discovered considerable evidence of plagiarism in Chris Anderson's new book, Free. [more inside]
posted by Diablevert on Jun 24, 2009 - 74 comments

In light of J.D. Salinger’s successful injunction against the publication of the subtly-nom-de-plumed J.D. California’s Catcher in the Rye followup, the NYTimes’s Jennifer Schuessler asks: How relevant is Holden Caulfield’s defiant disillusionism to the lives and tastes of modern adolescents? [more inside]
posted by oinopaponton on Jun 21, 2009 - 66 comments

Joan Crawford's Letty Lynton is currently available for viewing on YouTube. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 [more inside]
posted by pxe2000 on Jun 5, 2009 - 8 comments

What Plagiarism Looks Like. William Meehan, president of Jacksonville State University, wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1999. Carl Boening wrote his in 1996. "Jacksonville State says no substance has been found in the charges, and no action by the university will be taken against him", but, well, look at the identical passages highlighted in the first link above (and keep in mind that other parts of Boening's dissertation were paraphrased in Meehan's). Sadly, this is not the first time that this has happened where a college president was involved.
posted by Halloween Jack on Jun 2, 2009 - 56 comments

Excerpt 1: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq. Excerpt 2: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq. Can you tell which is Josh Marshall writing on Talking Points Memo on May 14 and which is Maureen Dowd writing in The New York Times on May 16?
posted by Joe Beese on May 18, 2009 - 138 comments

Guitarist Joe Satriani sues Coldplay over Viva La Vida (audio). Satriani's version: If I Could Fly (audio).
posted by starman on Dec 5, 2008 - 111 comments

Remember Laura K. Pahl, the girl who was famously humiliated for trying to buy a term paper over the internet? Perhaps she should have gone to a professional.
posted by Afroblanco on Oct 16, 2008 - 67 comments

Oasis have been accused of plagiarizing Cliff Richard. Does 'The Turning' have a certain resemblance to 'Devil Woman'? If so, it would not the first time... [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Oct 7, 2008 - 65 comments

Epic Theft? Epic Fail. "Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher and Laurence Francis, all from Maidstone, have dreamt of seeing Limbo of the Lost played across the globe since they first started discussing the game 10 years ago."* Conceived in the 90s as an Amiga 1200 title, the three Kentish lads went with the PC for the decades-deferred realization of their creative dream. Unfortunately, the long-delayed release of Limbo of the Lost is leaving reviewers with a profound sense of deja vu, as if they've seen this game somewhere before ... [more inside]
posted by grabbingsand on Jun 12, 2008 - 39 comments

Masseiana - Containing the three major works of Gerald Massey and his minor work commonly titled: The Lectures. Published here in their entirety, fully revised and amended, with additional material by the editor.
posted by tellurian on May 13, 2008 - 3 comments

Illustrators up in arms. Darren De Lieto, owner of Little Chimp Society, recently received word that his work and the work of 93 other illustrators has been used without permission in a dubious 350-page book entitled Colorful Illustrations 93ºC, being sold online and in bookstores for $100. With the rise of copyright-shaky China and the revitialization of the Orphan Works Act, are artists rights becoming more precarious? (Via Drawn!)
posted by billypilgrim on Apr 19, 2008 - 30 comments

"I mean he quite literally -- and in no way do I exaggerate when I say -- [Paul Simon] stole the songs from us." [more inside]
posted by Sys Rq on Apr 19, 2008 - 75 comments

Most well known for his "Obey Giant" street posters, Shepard Fairey has carefully nurtured a reputation as a heroic guerilla street artist waging a one man campaign against the corporate powers-that-be. Infantile posturing aside, Fairey’s art is problematic for another, more troubling reason - that of plagiarism.
posted by dhammond on Mar 18, 2008 - 91 comments

Plagiarism scandal rocks DC's Vertigo line. A comics blogger has discovered shocking evidence of theft in Fables, Y: The Last Man, Sandman, and other major Vertigo titles. (Via Comics Should Be Good!)
posted by UKnowForKids on Mar 10, 2008 - 28 comments

Tim Goeglein, director of the White House office of public liaison, is a plagiarist.
... and he actually admits it.

“It is true,” Tim Goeglein wrote to The Journal Gazette in an e-mail. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses."

Found by Blogger (and MeFi lurker) Nancy Nall.
posted by jpburns on Feb 29, 2008 - 25 comments

"I am, of course, gratified that this sordid southern-hemisphere tale of sex, plagiarism, quantum mechanics, and printers could be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction." If that doesn't grab you maybe you are on the wrong internet. [more inside]
posted by shothotbot on Dec 16, 2007 - 30 comments

The Rubinoos recently filed a lawsuit against Avril Lavigne, claiming that her song Girlfriend (Youtube) plagiarized from their song, I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend (mp3). An authorized cover version of the Rubinoos song performed by Lush and retitled "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" has even more similarities to the Lavigne song. Now that the teeming millions on the Internets have gotten into the act, YouTubers are now arguing whether Lavigne is a plagiarist, whether the Rubinoos plagiarized from the Rolling Stones, and whether Ms. Lavigne plagiarized a second time. Now that Web 2.0 has made it easier to uncover musical copycats, I'm hot on the case of Bob Marley vs. The Banana Splits.
posted by jonp72 on Jul 10, 2007 - 66 comments

Mike Tyndall is maintaining a page detailing all of the striking similarities between Todd Goldman's "art" and the original work of legitimate artists. (previously discussed on MetaFilter) Now, the image for which Goldman attracted a substantial amount of press and fame and upon which he built his profitable David And Goliath Tees company--his "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them" work--may have been partially copied from the portfolio of Chip Wass.
posted by fandango_matt on Apr 24, 2007 - 44 comments

Please God, make everyone die. Amen. Todd Goliath, the creator of the infamous "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them" t-shirts/paintings/flash games/etc. (previously x2) has been discovered to have a piece in a gallery show which is remarkably similar to this Purple Pussy cartoon by Dave Kelly (a/k/a Schmorky) of Keenspot and SA. Not only that, but he's got another character, Eve L. who bears more than a passing resemblance to Lenore, The Cute Little Dead Girl by Roman Dirge. (other examples in the main link -- a surprisingly on-topic thread for SA)
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Apr 7, 2007 - 103 comments

Two students sue Turnitin for copyright violations. "All of these kids are essentially straight-A students, and they have no interest in plagiarizing," said Robert A. Vanderhye, a McLean attorney representing the students pro bono. "The problem with [Turnitin] is the archiving of the documents. They are violating a right these students have to be in control of their own property." (via) (obligatory link to the Best. Thread. Ever)
posted by Horace Rumpole on Apr 2, 2007 - 166 comments

Timbaland accused of plagiarism Mega-popular music producer Timbaland has been accused of lifting the heart and soul of Nelly Furtado's "Do It" from a C64 SID chiptune arrangement by GRG of a MOD file, "AcidJazzed Evening," originally composed by Finnish music tracker Janne Suni. Or maybe he was just repurposing his own "original" ringtone from MSN. Nerds get angry and are dismissed as haters. The original tune is catchy, even as an MP3. It reminded me of the MOD collection I amassed in 1993, when I could fit hours of music on a floppy disk. My reminiscences took me to Amiga Music Preservation to try to reconstruct my old MOD collection from memory, but I failed. Maybe MP3 and AAC have made tracked music formats obsolete for most.
posted by bugmuncher on Mar 22, 2007 - 34 comments

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso
posted by borkencode on Feb 26, 2007 - 39 comments

The Ecstasy of Influence, A Plagiarism
posted by Captaintripps on Feb 24, 2007 - 20 comments

Procol Harum organist wins battle over joint authorship of A Whiter Shade of Pale. Gary Brooker is not amused, but then again it was a Bach ripoff anyway.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 20, 2006 - 31 comments

ABC Australia reports on plagiarism of Wikipedia by traditional media.
posted by jedro on Oct 9, 2006 - 39 comments

“Smithy code” The secret lies in HBHG and DVC. According to news reports the Judge who recently ruled in the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case has included his own code in his high court ruling (PDF). At this time, no one seems to have decoded it all...
posted by tiamat on Apr 26, 2006 - 39 comments

Kaavya Viswanathan is a 19-year-old Harvard student whose first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, just cracked the New York Times bestseller list. The problem? The Harvard Crimson and SF Gate assert that the author plagiarized much of it from two books by Megan McCafferty. Of course, it's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before with young writers.
posted by mothershock on Apr 24, 2006 - 222 comments

Vladimir Putin can add a new line to his resume: plagiarist.
posted by rxrfrx on Mar 26, 2006 - 14 comments

The Columbia Law School Music Plagiarism Project is a repository of the music industry's most famous copyright infringement cases of the past 100 years. Each case contains links to samples of the original song and the alleged infringer, and there's even a song list for easy browsing. (My favorite: Gilbert O'Sullivan v. Biz Markie).
posted by Saucy Intruder on Dec 17, 2005 - 42 comments

Plagiarism it's just about the most wrong thing you're told not to do in college. It seems even more wrong when one of your professors does it, but it certainly does drive up prices.
posted by nile_red on Dec 1, 2005 - 63 comments

Copyright infringement through gullibility: So, we've discussed Boilerplate previously (well, twice, actually; no, make that thrice). He's one of a handful of Victorian robots listed among the Mechanical Marvels of the Nineteenth Century. Chris Elliott (yes, that Chris Elliott) probably suspected that the robot wasn't real, but he must have assumed it to be a Victorian Era hoax and not a modern day one because he incorporated the fictional robot character into his upcoming pseudo-historical novel [NYTimes link; registration-free equivalent]. To add to the clear-cut case of copyright trouble, Boilerplate is also a character in the original hoax-perpetrator's graphic novel. Mr. Elliott says his younger brother performed the historical research.
posted by nobody on Nov 1, 2005 - 10 comments

Esquivalience-n. the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities. Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled "Flags Up!" Phony entries to dictionaries and encyclopedias to catch copiers. By posting this at work I am practicing esquivalience, no?
posted by caddis on Aug 22, 2005 - 44 comments

How to Recognize Plagiarism. (From Indiana University Bloomington.)
Here's some examples of malfeasance in case you, like me, flunked the test.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies on Aug 5, 2005 - 41 comments

Stripped for Parts Although the blogging community has had a hunch for some time, director Robert Fiveson has just confirmed that he's considering an injunction against the further distribution of The Island, as it, ahem, very closely mirrors his own film, Parts: The Clonus Horror. Michael Bay's film doesn't credit anyone who worked on Clonus, and press materials tout its "original screenplay". I suppose, though, Bay can always claim that he's being so deliciously meta by doing a clone of a clone picture... [A sideways-update to this post]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Jul 25, 2005 - 45 comments

Page 35 - a Da Vinci scholar finds himself the victim of a dastardly murder (the fourth of his kind to do so). Before he dies, he leaves a message in his own blood on his own body for our hero to find, leading our protagonist (and his heroine, complete with "flashing green eyes" and cleverly hidden links to previously wronged goddess figures) on a quest to find an explosive secret that could shake the foundations of the Catholic Church. Paintings, puzzles, keys that aren't keys, safe-deposit boxes in Zurich, stalking assassins and parchments that should be linen abound. Sound familiar? You bet your sweet bippy it does.
posted by obiwanwasabi on May 3, 2005 - 41 comments

Laura K. Pahl is a plagiarist. In which a blogger exacts poetic justice on a spoiled little rich girl at university.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy on Mar 29, 2005 - 579 comments

Oops. (Wash. Post Login/ Bugmenot) Jim Gibbons seems to have stolen most of his lefty-baiting, righty-rousing rambling from another crazy Republican. This is good for people who want to get rid of the guy.
posted by PhatLobley on Mar 7, 2005 - 20 comments

The New York Times' guide to plagiarism resources.
Apparently Consumer Reports is busy watching bread grow mold or something, so it's nice to see someone else addressing the consumer protection needs of today's college student.
posted by NortonDC on Aug 22, 2004 - 22 comments

Indian Superman is a movie of questionable legality released in India in the mid eighties. Perhaps it should have had a wider release since it has a great deal of humorous appeal for Western audiences. Check out this review from Stomp Tokyo. I'm looking forward to a crossover when Indian Superman meets Indian Spider-Man. via Sepia Mutiny
posted by rks404 on Aug 17, 2004 - 10 comments

Shyamalan may face legal action over Village - The Village can now join the long list of films accused of plagiarism in recent years. A lawsuit may be filed against M. Night Shyamalan's Blinding Edge Pictures and Disney for alleged plagiarism. Kiddie book writer Margaret Peterson Haddix claims that the movie bears disturbing similarities to her 1995 novel Running Out Of Time. While plagiarism of any kind is no laughing matter, it must be stated that the "disturbing similarity" is a plot twist many of us once used in our own stories back in grade school.
posted by circe on Aug 16, 2004 - 68 comments

Advertising Copycats is a site where various ad prints are compared for resemblances, from odd coincidences to downright plagiarism. [in French]
posted by Masi on Aug 11, 2004 - 12 comments

"The problem with this book is not that Jayson Blair told lies at the Times, but that his lies continue in this book. The book is a collection of patently ridiculous made-up fakery, with sexual escapades and other stuff that smacks of total fabrication. They are as absurd as the bogus positive reviews that Jayson slapped on a couple of days ago," an Amazon reviewer writes. After a grotesque publicity tour, with fawning interviews by Katie, Larry, Bill and Chris, war breaks out among average readers. Meanwhile, a new plagiarism charge, about the book itself.
posted by Slagman on Mar 12, 2004 - 17 comments

A good amount of bloggers are outright thieves. Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs found that a vast amount of popular bloggers stole ideas, topics, and content from lesser-known weblogs without any sort of attribution or crediting. The researchers created a new ranking algorithm called iRank to track the source of new ideas and topics, which you can play around with here.
posted by Darke on Mar 5, 2004 - 30 comments

Exhibit A: An unattributed article on Google Bombing posted last month on the Web site of Glenn Beck, a radio talk show guy. Exhibit B: An article on Google Bombing from 2001 on Uber.nu, attributed to Adam Mathes. Compare and contrast. It's possible Beck purchased the article for reprint, but the lack of attribution, either to Mathes or So New Media, suggests against it. Assuming plagiarism, two questions: 1. After a decade of the existence of the Web, how is it that people still don't get the concept that content plagiarized from the Web is easily discoverable, particularly when posted on the Web? 2. Honestly, now, is it really that hard to rewrite? Unrelated article on the Glenn Beck site: The Death of Shame. (via Oliver Willis)
posted by jscalzi on Jan 9, 2004 - 44 comments

Comeuppance is served: Blair Hornstine, the litigious valedictorian MeFi loves to hate, has been dropped from the Harvard class of '07 for her adventures in plagiarism. Quoting Nelson Munz here would be superfluous.
posted by serafinapekkala on Jul 11, 2003 - 158 comments

If you liked the lyrics on Dylan's last album, you'll probably also like the Japanese gangster novel he lifted some of them from. Verdict: Not guilty, on grounds of prior artistic achievement. (Long article in today's WSJ not linked because the old WSJ free-linkification doesn't work anymore!!?)
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jul 8, 2003 - 42 comments

Blair Hornstine makes Newsweek magazine. Just not in the way she would have liked, I'm sure. An impartial look at the situation, the day before her class graduation ceremonies proceed without her. Oh, and by the way, the salutatorian will speak, and the students are trying to stay positive and don't want the subject to come up tomorrow, thank you very much. So enjoy your day, kids.
posted by pmurray63 on Jun 18, 2003 - 62 comments

Helen Keller: A Living Lie? A fascinating New Yorker piece by Cynthia Ozick that explores Helen Keller's writing career and all the questions of authenticity it raises. She was charged with being a "fraud, a puppet, a plagiarist" and she was defended by the likes of Mark Twain and Alexander Graham Bell. Ozick ultimately asks the question: "Do we know only what we see, or do we see what we somehow already know?"
posted by adrober on Jun 17, 2003 - 14 comments

Remember Blair Hornstine? Her $2.5 million lawsuit against her high school for not naming her valedictorian resulted in an injunction and the sole possession of the title. Now it gets worse: she has a Jayson Blair problem. Several of her contributions to local papers were lifted from presidential speeches, Supreme Court opinions, and editorials.
posted by PrinceValium on Jun 5, 2003 - 65 comments

Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception The New York Times runs a long article detailing its preliminary findings in the matter of Jayson Blair, The Times' young staff reporter who made up sources, facts, and anecdotes in potentially hundreds of stories. Does this investigation help the Times avoid permanent disgrace? Or does this just confirm what you've always thought about the Times? Slate magazine is attributing part of the problem to affirmative action (Blair is black). Is AA relevant here?
posted by hhc5 on May 10, 2003 - 39 comments