The memo starts out nice enough with Pincus congratulating his mobile team for making some of the most popular games on Facebook and iOS. He also details plans for the mobile team to launch more titles across more platforms in the near future.

Then he gets into the accusations that the company steals ideas from other companies:

Google didn’t create the first search engine. Apple didn’t create the first mp3 player or tablet. And, Facebook didn’t create the first social network. But these companies have evolved products and categories in revolutionary ways. They are all internet treasures because they all have specific and broad missions to change the world.

We don’t need to be first to market. We need to be the best in market. There are genres that we’re going to enter because we know our players are interested in them and because we want and need to be where players are. We evolve genres by making games free, social, accessible and highest quality.

With regard to Dream Heights and the tower genre, it’s important to note that this category has existed since 1994 with games like Sim Tower and was more recently popularized in China with Tower of Babel in 2009 which achieved 15 million DAUs. On iOS there has been Yoot Tower, Tower Up, Tower Town, Tower Blocks and Tiny Tower. Just as our games, mechanics and social innovations have inspired and accelerated the game industry, its 30 year body of work has inspired us too.

He admits that none of their games were the first to market, but they made them “the most fun and social, and the most popular.”

Pincus goes on to say that he believes in the potential of social gaming to overtake television as the “most engaging medium of the 21st century.” He then details what he hopes Zynga can achieve in the gaming market:

In order to make this vision real, we need to work as a company and an industry to continue innovating, improving and hopefully revolutionizing every major genre of games for social play. Every successful game from developers big and small has pioneered some important new facet of this experience. We are proud of the mechanics we have pioneered that are now industry standards.

Part of what makes our industry cool and dynamic is the idea that small teams can build successful games. But at Zynga we will continue to innovate and expand our possibility space in order to delight our player base too.

This response seems somewhat subdued considering that Pincus is more famously known for saying, “I don’t want fucking innovation. You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”

As much as Pincus defends his company, the point still stands that they have made a living off of taking other developer’s ideas. While it’s common in the game industry to be inspired by other games like Darksiders being inspired by The Legend of Zelda and God of War, Zynga games feel like they just lift the code and replace the art.

In the end, however, it’s up to the gamer to decide who to support. Zynga has the marketing muscle behind their games, but indie developers can make a strong case for their original games by making a stink like NimbleBit did last week.

This has led to accusations over the years that Zynga flat-out copies games from their competitors. Zynga’s new game, Dream Heights, is taking fire for blatantly copying Tiny Tower, a popular iOS game from last year.

NimbleBit, makers of Tiny Tower, took to Twitter to congratulate Zynga on the launch of their new game.

What makes this even more strange is that NimbleBit went on to say that Zynga once attempted to acquire the company. When that fell through, Zynga probably felt compelled to make their own tower management game to compete with the popular iPhone game.

Apple has traditionally not enforced any rules on the app store in regards to blatant plagiarism and they probably won’t this time either. This just shows that Zynga is once again trying to capitalize on a good idea. Let’s just hope that Tiny Tower doesn’t get forgotten if Dream Heights gets too big.

NimbleBit created a humorous “infographic” comparing the two games. It’s up to you to decide if Zynga took the dirty route and blatantly copied Tiny Tower.

But, as Fast Company reports, there’s always someone out to game the system, and even a giant like Amazon has trouble swatting all the bugs in the barn.

The game afoot has come to light, firstly at least, in the erotica section of Amazon. Authors were noticing that their own works that had sold well elsewhere were being surpassed by fiction titles that were of very poor quality, even containing spelling errors in the titles. This led to a further look, and upon closer examination some major fouls were uncovered.

One author was found to have 40 titles in the store, but the contents were copied and pasted from other sources, ranging from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” to copies of user-submitted erotic fiction from online forums. Pasting from erotic websites was not unusual, it turns out. Other authors were found, upon closer examination, to have done the same thing.

And, it’s not just the steamy stuff either. Older works now in the public domain have been pasted in, retitled, and sold as original works. Books on health insurance, advice for senior citizens, and cookbooks have all been found to be plagiarized outright from other authors, many of whom are so small that they do not have the resources to fight a copyright battle in court.

That this kind of behavior is happening under Amazon’s nose might seem shocking to folks who have done business with them over the years, especially those associated with Amazon’s affiliate programs. Affiliates commonly spread stories of hair-trigger account suspensions for violating terms of service. It often seems that Amazon will shoot first – ask questions later – when it comes to affiliates.

But, suspending affiliates keeps Amazon from paying out money tallied up fraudulently. Quashing plagiaristic works on its virtual shelves may not be a priority since they have nothing to lose. If enough complaints come in on a particular title, they can remove that title, even sanction an author. But, they still have profited from the sale.

Some people point to the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act now under consideration as a means to stop this activity. But, many people see that approach as going after a fly with a sledgehammer. Too much damage would be done to the surrounding structure to make it wise.

Amazon has an email address that authors can submit complaints to if they wish to report plagiarism. But, there are tools available that can recognize text lifted from other sources. Businesses that solicit original material from article authors commonly check for plagiarism using little more than the almighty Google machine. That’s how some of the complaining authors in Amazon’s erotic fiction section found out their competitors’ trespasses. If Amazon wanted to be proactive in defending its legitimate authors, it could with little inconvenience.

Maybe John McCain’s spouse is a little different than most people worth millions, and enjoys the challenge of juggling pots, pans, and ingredients. Her resource for good old family recipes, published on the McCain campaign website, had a heaping helping of something else, namely theft.

The Huffington Post described how they found out Cindy McCain’s cookbook bore far more than a passing similarity to that of the Food Network:

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network’s site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain’s campaign site.

On a section of McCain’s site called “Cindy’s Recipes,” you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading “McCain Family Recipe.” Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the “McCain Family Recipes,” were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

The lame explanation for this, well, there isn’t an explanation. It’s being blamed on some “low-level unpaid staff” person, meaning whichever volunteer was asked by the campaign to find recipes for the website and slap Mrs. McCain’s name on them has been thrown under the proverbial campaign bus.

Maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal to people; we’re sure the man who would be President isn’t losing any sleep over this. We’re pretty certain if the potential First Lady really did publish a cookbook, and someone looted it to spiff up a cooking website, she and her hubby wouldn’t accept some BS excuse about a lowly functionary stealing it without anyone’s knowledge.

Does Open License Mean Open Season?

Slashdot blew the whistle on John Wiley and Sons (Wiley) and author George Orwel (note the one "L") for publishing a Wikipedia article on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The article appeared without attribution in Orwel’s Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors as though they were Orwel’s words, and not the collective writers of the article on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia contributor "Ydorb," who prefers to remain anonymous, says he wrote much, but not all, of the text that appeared in Black Gold, and provides a side-by-side comparison at Wikipedia. Ydorb says he was informed of the situation via another contributor who had read the book, prompting him to put together the comparison page.

In response to a WebProNews inquiry, Wiley’s Susan Spilka issued the following statement:

"In Black Gold by George Orwel, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., published a credentialed author and a thoroughly-sourced book.  However, it appears that a specific passage from Wikipedia was inadvertently added by our author to the text without attribution. George Orwel has assured us this was not intentional and has asked that we rectify the situation. Wiley will provide corrections to all future reprints of this book and make the changes to the ebook version.

"We take this situation very seriously.  We earn our readers’ trust by producing quality works by reputable authors.   On rare occasions, mistakes happen.  When they happen, we appreciate being alerted and do what is necessary to rectify any problems."

While it appears that Wiley will be doing just that, the incident brings up some important issues regarding open licenses used for collaborative works, including software, on the Internet. Because of the terms of the licensing agreement and the nature of the work, Ydorb and other contributors may have had no other recourse aside from media coverage.

Like much open source software, Wikipedia content is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, also known as "copyleft." This type of licensing says that content can be reused or repurposed verbatim, either commercially or non-commercially "so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement)."

But what if the attribution requirement is not met? Who will pursue the matter of infringement?

 Wikipedia says not them. Though the staff at the Wikimedia Foundation found the situation "frustrating," spokespersons agreed the company "doesn’t really take any position on this. It is not the copyright holder, the individuals who wrote the article in question are. They have licensed their contributions to the Foundation to get them into Wikipedia.

"Realistically all these folks can do if they feel aggrieved is appeal to public opinion via the media, it is expensive to pursue a copyright infringement case, and for material under GFDL the process would not be to extract money from the plagiarist, but to make them release their work under a compatible license."

And then there’s the problem of multiple anonymous contributors. "That it’s been edited raises very big factual questions," Technology and Marketing Law blogger Eric Goldman tells WebProNews. "Who did what to whom?" And because it’s under an open license, "it’s a little hard to object if somebody actually takes it."

At least in the case of the Khobar Towers article, it is clear that non-attribution is cause for infringement of the license. But there’s nobody willing to pursue the case, and if attribution is made eventually, it becomes a sort of no-harm-no-foul situation.

"This is a really great example of some of the problems with taking content off the Internet," says Goldman. "The publisher may not realize they’re giving their stuff away."
    

It’s hard for me, as a writer, to object to the ban.  We writers take a dim view of plagiarism; as Aaron Sorkin expressed through an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, “Accusing a writer of plagiarism – it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not . . .  You might as well accuse him of being a sex offender.”  (See – note the quotation marks, attribution, and link – we try to avoid any semblance of that offense.)

Yet the ban comes because, according to the BBC, “There have been complaints from universities about students being sold customised essays on the internet.”  In other words, some students “write” essays for school by providing a company with their credit card information, as opposed to typing out thirty pages.

The president of Universities UK, Professor Drummond Bone, was pleased with Google’s step to put an end to this practice.  “We welcome this move,” he said in a statement.  “Essay writing sites claim that students pay hundreds of pounds for model answers – but do not then submit these as their own work.  We all know this claim is absurd.”

By the way – as I learned of this development, it seemed that only British sources were covering it, and I almost concluded that the advertising ban would only apply in the UK.  But it should, in fact, take place “across Google’s global network.”

Especially interested persons can keep an eye on Google’s Content Policy page, where “essay services” should soon join “copyrighted works” and “fake documents” on the list of banned items and services.

Paul Collins states in his insightful article “Dead Plagiarists Society” that even great authors such as Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe plagiarized works of literature, sometimes entirely, to create beloved works of writing.

Plagiarism is undoubtedly the most common concern that any author faces when penning a story or book, and with so many works of literature having already been published it is incredibly simple to unintentionally plagiarize.

Many writers unknowingly plagiarize each day and may have done so in the past due to the fact that there was no tool, which could immediately reference the content of other authors.

Using Google Book Search, and the books on the site that are provided by both publishers and libraries, even the seemingly smallest acts of plagiarism can be discovered and prevented.

Google Book Search allows users to access millions pages worth of literature to find a book matching their desired content, and then link it to other search results.

The results will reveal the number of books, if any, containing the exact phrase or phrases which a user has entered, thereby preventing them from plagiarizing another author’s work.

To further prevent plagiarizing another author’s work, according to the site you can “click on additional search results to see other pages containing your original search term, or try a new search within the book.”

Each book that is searched also contains a listing of libraries where the book may be borrowed and bookstores where it may be purchased.

Also, each search result includes an ‘About this book’ page with basic bibliographic data like title, author, publication date, length and subject, according to Google Book creators.

The Google Book Search site says that for every book, results can be found in the following formats:

Full view: If it is determined that a book is out of copyright, or the publisher or rightsholder has given permission, users will be able to page through the entire book from start to finish repeatedly if needed. If the book is in the public domain, it can also be able download, save and print a PDF version.

Limited preview: If a publisher or author has joined the Google Book Search Partner Program, the pages may be viewed in full. Multiple searches may be conducted in the book, or browse through the available pages.

Snippet view: Users are redirected to the’About this book’ page. If the option to search within the book is chosen, for each search term Google will display up to three snippets of text from the book, and will be shown in context.

Utilization of the search engine could help prevent occurrences of plagiarism in the future, and could possibly help discover past plagiarism by famous authors.

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Autmn Davis is a staff writer for WebProNews covering ebusiness and technology.

I’m talking about plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the passing off of another person’s work as one’s own, whether deliberate or accidental. Accidental plagiarism is usually the result of poor citation or referencing or of poor preparation or a misunderstanding of plagiarism. Deliberate plagiarism is an attempt to claim another person’s work as one’s own. An unacknowledged use of words, ideas, information, research, or findings not one’s own, taken from any source is plagiarism.

The Boston Globe has a feature about online plagiarism with blogs. There’s even a blog about plagiarism, not surprisingly called Plagiarism Today. And who hasn’t heard of the high-profile (and unsuccessful) plagiarism lawsuit against The Da Vinci Code’ author Dan Brown?

In the business world, there’s the recent example of Raytheon CEO William Swanson who has admitted plagiarizing another’s work with his book on management tips (and who was actually outed by a blogger).

I have a long-held belief that you should regard anything you put on a website as literally being in the public domain, no matter what copyright notices or conditions on use you might attach to it. People will steal it or otherwise use it without recognition of the originating source as these stories indicate. So anything you view as valuable to you, don’t put it on the internet.

Writing in New York Magazine, David Edelstein has a thoughtful feature about plagiarism which includes this great view:

[] I have no compassion for plagiarists. They don’t go into trances. I think they sweat and lay a book next to the typewriter, and copy. I take the disclosure of their crimes as personally as possible. Words belong to the person who wrote them. There are few simpler ethical notions than this one, particularly as society directs more and more energy and resources toward the creation of intellectual property. Plagiarists have desecrated my profession and given every reader cause to doubt all I write. They have torn down the scaffolding of trust-from writer to editor, from publication to reader-that is the essence of journalism.

Not only journalism, of course – anyone writing and publishing anything is fair game.

The final word from Edelstein:

In this world of Google and Nexis, in which you can pick and choose among so many words written on a given subject, you can’t be sure that anything you read is original. Even this.

In the interests of acknowledging “use of words, ideas, information, research, or findings not one’s own” (see definition above), let me cite my other sources of background for this post – Andy Lark, Steve Rubel and Rex Hammock.

I wonder how and where this post will show up on the internet somewhere. Will highlighting the Creative Commons license that applies to this blog make any difference? And how would that really apply when I claim intellectual property ownership over my original writing, not that of others that I may cite under fair use, such as in this post?

Just asking.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

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They cite my blog as one example, but they also travel down the Long Tail of content to show how this issue can effects any publisher.

In the article, via a blog called Plagiarism Today (now I’m subscribed!), the Globe offers advice for bloggers hoping to protect themselves. This includes shortening RSS feeds to summaries.

I gotta wonder if plagiarism will kill full-text feeds one day. My blog is republished all across the Web. I have come to accept there’s nothing I can do about it. I am personally not ready to give up full-text feeds by a long shot. However, I bet I am in the minority.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Lorelle VanFossen has written an excellent guide on What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content:

Just because information is on the Internet does not mean it’s “free” to take and steal. Information, images, graphics, designs, and photographs, all are protected under copyright laws and are known as intellectual property. While it is nice to think that everything on the Internet is or should be free, for the most part it is. It is free to read, look at, wonder about, and even write about. It is not free to steal, make money from it, or use it as your own.

Related posts:

Creative Commons has teeth

Content plagiarism – is extra exposure worth going along with it?

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.