More on plagiarism and copyright
Aug 7th, 2008 by Eve
I am happy to see that Dragon’s Mark has come up with the following policy on plagiarism:
If you go here: http://dragonsmark.com/dm-infractions.php
you will see we have three levels of severity when it comes to site infractions.
Plagiarism is to be considered a “Severe incident”.
Quote:
Severe incidents, or six moderate incidents in any 180 day period (6 months) may result in any of the previous actions on up to banning of the “player” from the site for a minimum of six months, at which time the player may petition for reinstatement of their account.Plagiarism will be acted upon with the maximum action possible, and may also include loss of folder ownership/moderator privileges should the account be reinstated.
–“A Matter of Recent Concern”, by Panther
I’m not sure a player level ban of 6+ months is enough time for a rip-off artist to regain the community’s trust, rebuild his reputation, and clear the doubts that anything he wrote was his own or that he respects other writers and roleplayers. Hopefully it is. Hopefully this issue will never come up again.
I’m going to quibble over semantics now.
I know that the Admins at Dragon’s Mark intend the above to apply only or primarily to written content. However, plagiarism is:
- “using another’s work without giving credit. . . “Work” includes the words and ideas of others, as well as art, graphics. . .” (UC Davis, Div. of Student Affairs, Office of Student Judicial Affairs, September 2006 Avoiding Plagiarism)
- “The act of copying any portion of another’s work and representing it as your own, regardless of whether or not the work is copyrighted or in the public domain.” (United States Patent and Trademark Office, Piracy Glossary)
- “a copying of someone’s ideas, text or other creative work and claiming it as one’s own.” (Wictionary, Plagiarism)
See where I’m going with this?
Plagiarism doesn’t just apply to the written word.
Does this mean that Dragon’s Mark is suddenly going to start wielding the banhammer against people who have uncredited images in their character profiles, signatures, and message boards posts? I doubt it. After all, they already have guidelines in place for this — but apparently only for the Gallery:
The Red Dragon Inn Galleries are for players to post original artwork related to the RDI, its environments, characters or related to a storyline.
Copyrighted material — images by fantasy illustrators, movie photos, actors, tv shows, etc. — will be removed.
No nudity allowed.
No graphic violence.
The images are not clip art. If you wish to use an image please ask the owner. Respect the owner’s copyright.
We reserve the right to remove images due to content at anytime.- Red Dragon Inn, Gallery Guidelines
Most of the players, hosts and admins included, seem to share the “right-click, save-as, mine-now” mentality. There are some wild fantasies floating around out there about how copyright doesn’t (or shouldn’t) apply to pictures you find on the internet. I’ve heard all of the excuses before. I’ve even made some of them myself, before I knew better. I acknowledge it would be a monumental task to review even just active member profiles and posts. However, I think that if asked, most members would be willing to voluntarily provide some sort of attribution or source link for the graphics they use in their profiles and posts.
I hope Dragon’s Mark chooses to crack down on all aspects of plagiarism and copyright violation — if not for the moral and ethical (or legal) issues, then at least for the sake of consistency.
“I hope Dragon’s Mark chooses to crack down on all aspects of plagiarism and copyright violation — if not for the moral and ethical (or legal) issues, then at least for the sake of consistency.”
Yes. I would like to see some sort of, “If you are going to use artwork not your own, PLEASE at least try to credit the website you got it from, the artist, the photographer, the model, the actor–something.”
Credit isn’t exactly as awesome as, say, being given permission. (Even I have a photo being used for one of my alt characters that I do not know who took the picture. But..) But at least it’s a start and perhaps a great way to educate those that don’t actually know any better.