Update: Three minutes after I published this post, Kevin responded to me on Twitter and has since very graciously offered an apology, which I'm happy to accept. As promised, I've printed his response, and added some further thoughts about how we can turn this unfortunate affair into something positive.
Original:
I think that's really poor form, and I think that the frequent flyer blogosphere — and those of us who make our living from writing about travel on the web — should know about it.
After a few hours of firmly not taking "talk to someone else" for an answer, I finally squeezed a full list of the airlines out of a spokesperson from the Hong Kong Immigration Department.
Score one for the forces of informed travellers. I wrote up the article, and my editor and I were really pleased with the response.
So I was disappointed three days ago to read one of the blogs that's been in my Google Reader for years and see it blatantly nicked.
And down to the very screencapped images I'd used from the Hong Kong immigration video explaining how the system works. (Try a Google Image Search for the one of the gates and the one of the sticker. The only place they're online is at AusBT.)
His addition to my afternoon of research? Changing my comma-separated list into a bulleted one.
(Top tip if you're going to steal someone's content and do that: it's a lot less suspicious if you use different shorthand names for the airlines than the place you nicked it from, and do make sure you delete all the commas.)
I agree. That's why I spent half a day researching and writing about it. It would have been ethical blogging for Kevin to have acknowledged my work. It's unethical not to.
Let me be clear, I'm not asserting ownership over a list that the Hong Kong Government sent me.
Nor am I asserting ownership over a couple of screencaps.
Nor would I be writing this if Kevin had said something like "there are 34 airlines, including [a handful he cared about] — for the full list, see this handy article on AusBT". I am a big fan of open information and boosting the signal, and it's only sensible to relate stuff written for another audience to your own.
What I am saying is this: I spent time getting that list, and time putting the article together. Nobody owns simple facts, but copying and pasting the list is clearly wrong. I think bloggers, readers, journalists and commentators would agree with me.
It's really not cool to file off the serial numbers from an article, rearrange the meat of the content and put it up without credit. It's even worse to do so without a single reference to the source info. And it's pretty inexcusable from Kevin, who's a professional photographer and knows his way around copyright.
I'm not interested in a fight here. I contacted Kevin early morning his time on Tuesday. It's been more than 48 hours — during which time he's posted a blog entry — and I've still heard nothing from him. I'll be happy to print a response if this blog post prompts him to get back to me with something he'd like to be public.
I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on how this should work. What's the line between copying and sourcing? How can we best be ethical writers online? How do we as a loosely-networked community stand on this? What role should for-profit, pro and semi-pro hosting providers like BoardingArea take here? Here or on Twitter works. (I'm @thatjohn.)
15 minutes later, he updated the top of his original post (though not as a correction, and published after a long trip report segment, so his readers won't be seeing it unless they go looking):
Kevin has also been in touch via email with apologies, which I'm happy to accept. I welcome Kevin's practically immediate response to my post, thank him for it, and sympathise with his personal life issues.
Without wishing to be ungracious, nor to crucify Kevin for the mistake, I hope this provides an impetus for the people writing in the travel/frequent flyer/points space to have a think and a chat about how we source, credit, link to and report on each other.
All too often we gripe to each other in emails or Twitter DMs but don't do anything about forming the nrorms and mores of our online community.
I do think it was unwise of Kevin to (a) think that lifting to that extent was okay in the first place, and (b) respond three minutes after I went public with this, despite me giving him 48 hours to respond to my email — during which time, and with all due consideration for his pressures, he seems to have felt that responding was a lower priority than continuing a trip report. It just looks bad, even though I absolutely sympathise with his situation.
(I also discovered that even more of his post was lifted straight from another AusBT article — I hadn't thought to check whether he'd also "based" some of his post from a follow-up piece by my editor too.)
I'm not sure what I think about Kevin's reasoning of having to "route around", nor about the method of his correction, which is now 33 page-down screens below the fold (do we have a better way of saying that when the "fold" is a screen?). But I absolutely appreciate that we don't talk about this a lot, and I'm not aware of a "Congratulations: You messed up on your blog! Here's how to issue a retraction" how-to going around.
I'm also interested in his comment below, suggesting an omission of attribution (whereas he did actually carefully attribute the screencaps he lifted from my piece, but to the HK Immigration Department). Should that have had a "via" or "hat tip"?
I'm interested to hear what others think is an appropriate way for online media to cite old and new media, publicise corrections, and keen to contribute to a discussion on where the blog/new media line should be drawn on reporting, sourcing and the rest.
Original:
Short version
Kevin of GhettoIFE at BoardingArea nicked the contents of a professional article I wrote, down to the very images, without a single lick of credit or reference.I think that's really poor form, and I think that the frequent flyer blogosphere — and those of us who make our living from writing about travel on the web — should know about it.
Long version
Back in September, I spent an afternoon on the phone and writing emails, bouncing between Hong Kong International Airport and the Hong Kong Immigration Department, trying to find out more about the Hong Kong immigration e-Channels for frequent flyers.After a few hours of firmly not taking "talk to someone else" for an answer, I finally squeezed a full list of the airlines out of a spokesperson from the Hong Kong Immigration Department.
Score one for the forces of informed travellers. I wrote up the article, and my editor and I were really pleased with the response.
So I was disappointed three days ago to read one of the blogs that's been in my Google Reader for years and see it blatantly nicked.
And down to the very screencapped images I'd used from the Hong Kong immigration video explaining how the system works. (Try a Google Image Search for the one of the gates and the one of the sticker. The only place they're online is at AusBT.)
His addition to my afternoon of research? Changing my comma-separated list into a bulleted one.
(Top tip if you're going to steal someone's content and do that: it's a lot less suspicious if you use different shorthand names for the airlines than the place you nicked it from, and do make sure you delete all the commas.)
Plagiarism, theft and writing online
"Hong Kong E-Channel... Darn useful", Kevin headed the copied article.I agree. That's why I spent half a day researching and writing about it. It would have been ethical blogging for Kevin to have acknowledged my work. It's unethical not to.
Let me be clear, I'm not asserting ownership over a list that the Hong Kong Government sent me.
Nor am I asserting ownership over a couple of screencaps.
Nor would I be writing this if Kevin had said something like "there are 34 airlines, including [a handful he cared about] — for the full list, see this handy article on AusBT". I am a big fan of open information and boosting the signal, and it's only sensible to relate stuff written for another audience to your own.
What I am saying is this: I spent time getting that list, and time putting the article together. Nobody owns simple facts, but copying and pasting the list is clearly wrong. I think bloggers, readers, journalists and commentators would agree with me.
It's really not cool to file off the serial numbers from an article, rearrange the meat of the content and put it up without credit. It's even worse to do so without a single reference to the source info. And it's pretty inexcusable from Kevin, who's a professional photographer and knows his way around copyright.
I'm not interested in a fight here. I contacted Kevin early morning his time on Tuesday. It's been more than 48 hours — during which time he's posted a blog entry — and I've still heard nothing from him. I'll be happy to print a response if this blog post prompts him to get back to me with something he'd like to be public.
I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on how this should work. What's the line between copying and sourcing? How can we best be ethical writers online? How do we as a loosely-networked community stand on this? What role should for-profit, pro and semi-pro hosting providers like BoardingArea take here? Here or on Twitter works. (I'm @thatjohn.)
Update, 0245 GMT / 1545 NZ
Three minutes after I hit publish on this post, Kevin responded on Twitter:15 minutes later, he updated the top of his original post (though not as a correction, and published after a long trip report segment, so his readers won't be seeing it unless they go looking):
Kevin has also been in touch via email with apologies, which I'm happy to accept. I welcome Kevin's practically immediate response to my post, thank him for it, and sympathise with his personal life issues.
Without wishing to be ungracious, nor to crucify Kevin for the mistake, I hope this provides an impetus for the people writing in the travel/frequent flyer/points space to have a think and a chat about how we source, credit, link to and report on each other.
All too often we gripe to each other in emails or Twitter DMs but don't do anything about forming the nrorms and mores of our online community.
I do think it was unwise of Kevin to (a) think that lifting to that extent was okay in the first place, and (b) respond three minutes after I went public with this, despite me giving him 48 hours to respond to my email — during which time, and with all due consideration for his pressures, he seems to have felt that responding was a lower priority than continuing a trip report. It just looks bad, even though I absolutely sympathise with his situation.
(I also discovered that even more of his post was lifted straight from another AusBT article — I hadn't thought to check whether he'd also "based" some of his post from a follow-up piece by my editor too.)
I'm not sure what I think about Kevin's reasoning of having to "route around", nor about the method of his correction, which is now 33 page-down screens below the fold (do we have a better way of saying that when the "fold" is a screen?). But I absolutely appreciate that we don't talk about this a lot, and I'm not aware of a "Congratulations: You messed up on your blog! Here's how to issue a retraction" how-to going around.
I'm also interested in his comment below, suggesting an omission of attribution (whereas he did actually carefully attribute the screencaps he lifted from my piece, but to the HK Immigration Department). Should that have had a "via" or "hat tip"?
I'm interested to hear what others think is an appropriate way for online media to cite old and new media, publicise corrections, and keen to contribute to a discussion on where the blog/new media line should be drawn on reporting, sourcing and the rest.
