Samantha Beeston , a young British artist, won the Textprint illustration prize this year. Except she allegedly did it with Lauren Nassef’s work. Since the accusations of plagiarism have come to light – including a fake sketchbook from Beeston – both her website and mention of her award on the Textprint website have mysteriously vanished.
posted by mippy on Aug 9, 2009 - 57 comments

Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series “Conversations With God,” recently posted a personal Christmas essay on the spiritual Web site Beliefnet about his son’s kindergarten winter pageant. During a dress rehearsal, he wrote, a group of children spelled out the title of a song, “Christmas Love,” with each child holding up a letter. One girl held the “m” upside down, so that it appeared as a “w,” and it looked as if the group was spelling “Christ Was Love.” It was a heartwarming Christmas story from a writer known for his spiritual teachings. Except it never happened — to him. [more inside]
posted by tatnasty on Jan 10, 2009 - 95 comments

Dude, You Stole My Article They say everyone's a critic, but in this case, the critic is everyone. Today in Slate, Jody Rosen uncovers what just might be "in purely statistical terms ... the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism". Via Stolen from Zoilus.
posted by Paid In Full on Aug 7, 2008 - 97 comments

Obama accused of plagarism. Clinton aide Howard Wolfson claims Barack Obama plagarized a speech by Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA). If they do seem similar, it could be because they were likely written by the same person, political consultant David Axelrod, a man who gets around.
posted by timsteil on Feb 18, 2008 - 299 comments

The Inner Life of an Intelligently Designed Cell? Remember The Inner Life of a Cell animation (discussed here)? Apparently the Discovery Institute (recently discussed here) is showing it in presentations with a new title and narration, and without attribution.
posted by homunculus on Nov 20, 2007 - 20 comments

Devolution: Nature's U-Turn is a new music video concept by rock band KoRn for their single Evolution. The premise? Mankind isn't evolving, it's devolving... getting dumber by the day. Wait. Haven't we seen this before? We have, and Devo's Gerald V. Casale isn't happy. "We denounce this as impostors playing with fire." he says of Korn on the Club Devo website. He elaborates in a new interview with Rolling Stone, including a possibility of their first new record in 20 years. Devo's also put out a new song, "Watch Us Work It", which appears in a commercial for Dell laptops [youtube link], with a official music video and single release to come.
posted by SansPoint on Jul 26, 2007 - 59 comments

Why waste time on playing roleplaying games or writing pastiches when you can actually worship Cthulhu? Join an existing Cthulhu cult or form your own!. They've got a book and everything! (though it may contain big chunks of wiki-plagarism). As ever, the ability to rock a traditionalist shaved-head-and-goatee satanist look considered a plus.
posted by Artw on Apr 29, 2007 - 32 comments

Can photographers be plagarists?
posted by Meatbomb on Feb 8, 2007 - 60 comments

Dapper: The Data Mapper
A recently launched service that allows users to extract data from any website into XML, and transform or build applications and mashups with that data. Described by it's creators as a way to, "easily build an API for any website... through a visual and intuitive process". Plagiarism Today, meanwhile, has cause for concern, "Dapper is a scraper. Nothing more... now the technologically impaired can scrape content from any site... the potential danger [is] very, very real".
posted by MetaMonkey on Sep 5, 2006 - 31 comments

Rush Limbaugh loudly and repeatedly accuses NYT's Howell Raines of plagiarism over "Kerry / Lurch."
Jim Romenesko quietly wonders if that's possible.
posted by soyjoy on Jun 3, 2004 - 35 comments

Students Plagiarize Less Than Many Think
RIT Profs say 16.5 percent of students reported having "sometimes" cut and pasted text into a paper without a citation, only 8 percent of students reported having done so "often" or "very frequently", but 50.4 percent reported that others "often" or "very frequently" cut and pasted text from the Internet.
"High-school students who are growing up with the Internet, they're having real difficulty" distinguishing what is and is not plagiarism, he says. "Many of them are developing an attitude that anything on the Internet is public domain, and they're not seeing copying it as cheating."
posted by Blake on Feb 6, 2002 - 10 comments