3 Count: CSU, SDSU and MIM

This is daily column on Plagiarism Today where the site brings you three of the days biggest, most important copyright and plagiarism news links. If you want to offer your feedback on the column, use the contact form or just follow me on Twitter at @plagiarismtoday.

1: Fortune’s Barney Gimbel Leaves Magazine Amid Plagiarism Chargee

First up today, Fortune writer Barney Gimbel has left the magazine after being charged with ripping off portions of a recent article from a 2004 New York Times Magazine article. You can see comparisons of the two articles in the link above and judge for yourself.

Early reports indicated that Gimbel was fired but that has since come to light that he left his job though the word “voluntarily” doesn’t seem to fit either.

2: CSU settles SDSU copyright lawsuit

This one is a bit confusing so bear with me. California State University (CSU) recently settled a lawsuit filed by a marketing firm, Marketing Information Masters (MIM), against them and one of their professors, Robert Rauch, who teaches at San Diego State University (SDSU), one of CSU’s campuses.

MIM accused the professor of plagiarizing large portions of a study they did on the impact of the 2003 Holiday Bowl. Rauch, along with SDSU, had been tapped to do a similar study on the 2004 Holiday Bowl. Initially, the suit against CSU had been dropped on the grounds of “sovereign immunity” since they were a government institution. However, they agreed to settle the case to avert any appeals, a sign that they likely weren’t confident of their chances in the appellate court.

3: Middle Men, Aggregators, And Apologies

Finally today, developer and musician Zed Shaw has a few words about the future of the music business as well as the definition of aggregators. According to shaw, what online music needs is “A dirt simple way to publish their art on a site and tell people to go get it in the easiest way. The people then need a way to one click subscribe and keep getting the music.”

Shaw also said that aggregators that host the content of what they are aggregating, rather than simply linking to it, are violating copyright law (in most cases assumedly) and distinguishes those sites from sites like Hacker News and Slashdot that merely link to interesting sites.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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