Sunday, July 18, 2010

John Smithson's Plagiarist Guilt Displayed In Post Headline?

I visited John Smithon's website and noticed an interesting headline that I though I would share:


Why do I find this headline interesting?  If you are not familiar with who John Smithson is, don't worry - he is a little known conservative blogger from California who has accused this site of plagiarism (this site has a similar name to that of his).  In response to Smithson's claims, the authors of The Midnight Review had pointed out numerous instances in which he had copied articles from various sources, as well as part of the title of this website

Recently, Smithson had the accidental visit to his website by someone from the Executive Office of the President - most likely due to the fact that Smithson cut-and-paste an op-ed piece for Politico.

Why would Smithson include this visit in a headline that mentions websites being shut down because of "copyright violations?"

Maybe Smithson is feeling some of that plagiarist guilt.

I also thought I would like to point out that the article Smithson cites is sympathetic to the websites that plagiarized material (in the name of "free speech"), not the federal government protecting the intellectual rights of others.  I thought I would share the Copyright and Patent Clause of the Constitution, found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Was Smithson's post implying that the federal government should not have intervened to protect the intellectual property of others?

2 comments:

  1. Someone is trying to pull someones chain here. Do you really think the White House would be giving out there IP address.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did a search on Google for that IP address and came up with similar info. I can believe it is from the office but I doubt it is anything serious. As I wrote, I think someone in the office was searching for a news article and came across Smithson's site... I'm sure if you look at the stats, they were probably on the site for a short period of time...

    ReplyDelete

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