Recall if you will my rambling exploration of Laurence’s article on NGO’s and Central Asia. It has mysteriously appeared, in full, on the subscription section of a newspaper website (The Times of Central Asia), under the dateline “TASHKENT, April 17 (Registan).”
Here is a link to the Google Cache, as the subscription firewall prevents me from viewing it. I must admit to being a bit fuzzy about how copyright works on blogs, but traditionally it is considered stealing (i.e., plagiarism) if another publication re-posts without attribution, especially for a subscription, and especially when it gets basic facts in the dateline wrong, like the date and city of publication. Note we have a quite noticeable copyright on the site’s footer.
So, is this stealing? The inclusion of “Registan” in the dateline doesn’t change things, as I write under my own copyright. Plus, I would have a hard time believing that this would be acceptable to the AP or Reuters, especially if it was without notice and for commercial use.
I’ve written the owner. We’ll see what his response is.
See Also: Plagiarism.org, on how services like TurnItIn are helping to eliminate plagiarism. I guess it’s funny that this isn’t the first time I’ve been plagiarized: TurnItIn was actually instrumental in one of my professors discovering that their student had ripped me off. What’s the deal?
More info on why this matters is here.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 19 comments }
I guess this is a matter for the WTO intellectual property legal eagles…or your lawyer…In any case, congratuations on having published something worth stealing!
I can smypathise. I had something ripped off my own blog and reprinted in a Georgian newspaper. They apologised, but it does make you ask questions about a lot of the material you read on the internet. Good luck
The Times of Central Asia has an old habit of cut and paste. I remember that four or five years ago, they had a run-in with Eurasianet if I remember well.
I can confirm that Ataman, our very own Peter saw his work published at the Times CA twice. Doesn’t it make you feel kind of cool to be the Times’s new Tashkent correspondent?
Now all I need is to actually have ever been to Tashkent, ever!
I’m also assuming that, because their offices are in Bishkek, I can’t do anything about it.
More strange developments: I received the plagiarized piece in a “weekly” (my first ever) email from the Times of Central Asia editorial office. I have looked on their site before, but never paid for anything. Did I get something for nothing, or nothing for nothing?
Muslim Uzbekistan has also lifted stuff from here. But I have much larger problems with subscription services ripping us off.
Copyright is 100% clear, at least under US law, on these things. If no copyright notice is found, protection automatically defaults to all rights reserved. We do have a copyright notice in the footer, though.
‘I’m also assuming that, because their offices are in Bishkek, I can’t do anything about it.’
Don’t forget Registan‘s Man in Bishkek, Teo! Maybe he could try and ‘collect’ payment on yr behalf in true post-Soviet fashion (ahem!)
I’ve already asked him to look into it. Since he does work for them, I hope he’ll be able to sort things out.
that sounds like blog speak for ‘break some thumbs’
Isn’t Kyrgystan a member of WTO?
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Central Asia
Not Central Asia