We Are The Network will discuss new practices of plagiarism and so-called professional rewriting on Tuesday January 12, at Noon SLT/PDT (9 pm CET) at the Epoch Institute in Second Life.
Joel Foner gives more information about these practices on his site. He mentions services which write your paper using “your ideas”, naming you as the sole author. Other practices want to improve search engine placement (search engines penalize duplicates, and re-writing can fool the engines).
I don’t know whether other practices will be discussed. What about services such as Posterous and Tumblr which make it very easy to re-blog posts? This is not different from re-tweeting, so it seems. The original blog is mentioned, and sometimes blogs make it clear that they appreciate re-blogging.
Is tweeting and re-tweeting fundamentally different from blogging and re-blogging? If so, why? Because tweets are no longer than 140 characters? Because re-tweeting is part of the game? But what about short form blog posts? And how much people can quote from other posts and in what proportion to “new” content?
I look forward to the discussion!
Roland Legrand
