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Re: Our position on plagiarism
There's "plagarism" and there's plagarism. It's a bit like pornography (to use a famous example): "I know it when I see it." That said, sometimes there's plagarism that's so outrageous one need not be a legal expert to recognize it.
Someone once wrote to me that he regarded a certain, well-known, and pretty-esteemed historian/writer was "a plagarist of the lowest order." What did this historian/writer do to deserve this label? Per my correspondent, the correspondent had told the historian where to find, in the National Archives and perhaps some other public repositories, information on a certain regiment in a certain battle about which the historian was writing a book. I guess the correspondent wanted to be in a footnote or in the book's acknowledgements or something but, because the historian published the book (a volume that is is fairly well-known to most of us) without naming my correspondent, the correspondent called the historian "a plagarist of the lowest order." Last I knew, it was legal and ethical to use material in the National Archives, because they're public domain. I therefore thought my correspondent to be more than a bit unreasonable about the issue. To me, that was hardly "plagarism".
Sometimes people excerpt a certain amount of words or sentences from someone else's published work. Whether or not that's plagarism, if done without the permission of the author (which is probably very common), is highly debatable and is something for legal eagles to decide. There's something (which you can read online--I believe I posted it here once in a previous edition of this forum)--called the "fair use rule" that attempts to provide some broad guidelines on what you can rightfully use of someone else's work.
The fair use rule is something that keeps copyright lawyers (and other legal eagles who concentrate on that type of thing) in business. What constitutes fair use when you're using a quote from a previously-published work written by someone else? The answer is, "it all depends", in part upon the length of the excerpt and in part upon the length of the original work (for instance, if you excerpt 100 words from someone's 200-word essay without their permission, that's probably not "fair use").
Remember, copyright laws are mostly written to protect the commercial value (that's dollars) of art--whether it's recorded music or some other form of artistic expression that can be sold for money. If the excerpt is small enough, it's perfectly legal to do it. A great example of this is how certain "rap" (hip hop?) artists "sample" parts of tunes of other artists, often to the point that a listener can readily tell where the "sample" came from. That's usually considered legal, depending on the "sample", even if the rap artist repeats that sampling over and over, so that it's virtually the basis for his or her new recording.
My work has been (as I viewed it) properly cited in the footnotes or endnotes of others' work, including a couple of "big name" Civil War historian/writers. When each of these guys called me and we talked on the phone, and I e-mailed them some info, they never (that I recall), explicitly asked, "May I use a portion of your writing in my book?" but because I was cited, I certainly had no problem with their use of the material (in fact, bieng an amateur, I was flattered, especially because one guy was my favorite historian/writer still publishing today :) ). One such "name writer" had a number of pages in one of his books that were clearly based almost exclusively on my research, but I was cited in the endnotes several times, and considering that most of what he was citing was stuff that I'd already published in a magazine (North and South) and been paid for, I had no problem with his reliance on my work (again, I was actually flattered).
To an extent, sometimes what a writer may regard as "plagarism" of his or her work may depend in part on the value of what was lifted without the writer's permission. Frankly put, most reenactor-writing has little real financial value. No one gets rich (or probably even makes a living of much a sort) off of writing for reenactors. I've seen parts of my work lifted without my permission in more than one place--often in the handbook or some reenactor group or in the "handbook" that sometimes accompanies camp of instruction-type events. I generally don't do much about that either, because when I write a reenactor how-to article the idea is to get info out there for reenactors to "do it more accurately". And those cases that I've seen where someone used my work without my permission are always credited to me, whether it's an article-reprint or whether someone cites my work (sometimes at some length!) in something they wrote. And, most of all, no one was making money off of re-using my stuff without permission--that's a key point. I'll almost always share info or readily authorize a reprint of an article or something, but if it's for someone else to make money off it, well... When major, glossy history magazines reprint an article (of course, they are doing so to sell it again), they always pay the writer; at least that's my experience--several of my articles have been reprinted in special, limited-edition collectible volumes by the magazine that originally published the article in a regular issue; they pay their writers for that, and are good enough to do so without the writer needing to come knock on their door after he or she saw it on the newsstand.
Of course, these magazines also use something that's virtually unknown in the reenactors' writing/researching community: a one- or two-page legal agreement stipulating the terms of use of the author's work. (That I know of, no reenactor-oriented periodical uses such things, whether "Camp Chase Gazette", "Civil War Historian", "Citizens' Companion", "Civil War News", "Civil War Courier", etc.; I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that "Reenactors' Journal (now defunct) and "Smoke and Fire News" do not (or did not) use such agreements. These agreements are nice because 1) Everyone knows what they're agreeing to with the use of the author's work, and 2) The agreement is a very simple form (at least the ones I've signed with periodicals like North and South, Military Heritage, America's Civil War, and others).
There's plagarism of thought--so some folks claim. There's been some fairly well known examples of this in reenacting, where one party claims to have been the first to research or write on, or portray, this or that, and the claim is made that they have exclusive rights to that idea or portrayal. I won't comment on that, but will just say that once upon a time, I was privvy to discussions with someone who was in a snit because he or she claimed to somehow have an exclusive right (or something) to publish works on the Civil War's common Federal soldier. Yes, some folks have made such claims that I've heard of, as preposterous as it may sound. Draw your own conclusion on whether a jury would call that "plagarism". If it was, then the estates of folks like Wilbur Hindman and John Billings would sue the estate of Bell I. Wiley, not to mention many reenactors!
Then there's other, more notorious examples of plagarism, where even a blind man can see that a certain act constitutes plagarism. These are the cases where the plagarist litererally retypes the original work without knowledge or consent of the original author and, with little or no editing to even attempt to disguise it, sells it to someone else while representing it as his or her own work. It's difficult to argue that such behavior is anywhere near "proper" or ethical.
The thing about reenactors plagarizing reenactors, as Paul and Justin appear to be pointing out in their posts above, is that it may well discourage folks from further publishing their research. Should plagarism do that, it's a loss to the community because good, documented resarch prepared for use by reenactors is all too often a rarity, and heavens knows, more of it is certainly needed to keep the hobby moving forward.
There's "plagarism" and there's plagarism. It's a bit like pornography (to use a famous example): "I know it when I see it." That said, sometimes there's plagarism that's so outrageous one need not be a legal expert to recognize it.
Someone once wrote to me that he regarded a certain, well-known, and pretty-esteemed historian/writer was "a plagarist of the lowest order." What did this historian/writer do to deserve this label? Per my correspondent, the correspondent had told the historian where to find, in the National Archives and perhaps some other public repositories, information on a certain regiment in a certain battle about which the historian was writing a book. I guess the correspondent wanted to be in a footnote or in the book's acknowledgements or something but, because the historian published the book (a volume that is is fairly well-known to most of us) without naming my correspondent, the correspondent called the historian "a plagarist of the lowest order." Last I knew, it was legal and ethical to use material in the National Archives, because they're public domain. I therefore thought my correspondent to be more than a bit unreasonable about the issue. To me, that was hardly "plagarism".
Sometimes people excerpt a certain amount of words or sentences from someone else's published work. Whether or not that's plagarism, if done without the permission of the author (which is probably very common), is highly debatable and is something for legal eagles to decide. There's something (which you can read online--I believe I posted it here once in a previous edition of this forum)--called the "fair use rule" that attempts to provide some broad guidelines on what you can rightfully use of someone else's work.
The fair use rule is something that keeps copyright lawyers (and other legal eagles who concentrate on that type of thing) in business. What constitutes fair use when you're using a quote from a previously-published work written by someone else? The answer is, "it all depends", in part upon the length of the excerpt and in part upon the length of the original work (for instance, if you excerpt 100 words from someone's 200-word essay without their permission, that's probably not "fair use").
Remember, copyright laws are mostly written to protect the commercial value (that's dollars) of art--whether it's recorded music or some other form of artistic expression that can be sold for money. If the excerpt is small enough, it's perfectly legal to do it. A great example of this is how certain "rap" (hip hop?) artists "sample" parts of tunes of other artists, often to the point that a listener can readily tell where the "sample" came from. That's usually considered legal, depending on the "sample", even if the rap artist repeats that sampling over and over, so that it's virtually the basis for his or her new recording.
My work has been (as I viewed it) properly cited in the footnotes or endnotes of others' work, including a couple of "big name" Civil War historian/writers. When each of these guys called me and we talked on the phone, and I e-mailed them some info, they never (that I recall), explicitly asked, "May I use a portion of your writing in my book?" but because I was cited, I certainly had no problem with their use of the material (in fact, bieng an amateur, I was flattered, especially because one guy was my favorite historian/writer still publishing today :) ). One such "name writer" had a number of pages in one of his books that were clearly based almost exclusively on my research, but I was cited in the endnotes several times, and considering that most of what he was citing was stuff that I'd already published in a magazine (North and South) and been paid for, I had no problem with his reliance on my work (again, I was actually flattered).
To an extent, sometimes what a writer may regard as "plagarism" of his or her work may depend in part on the value of what was lifted without the writer's permission. Frankly put, most reenactor-writing has little real financial value. No one gets rich (or probably even makes a living of much a sort) off of writing for reenactors. I've seen parts of my work lifted without my permission in more than one place--often in the handbook or some reenactor group or in the "handbook" that sometimes accompanies camp of instruction-type events. I generally don't do much about that either, because when I write a reenactor how-to article the idea is to get info out there for reenactors to "do it more accurately". And those cases that I've seen where someone used my work without my permission are always credited to me, whether it's an article-reprint or whether someone cites my work (sometimes at some length!) in something they wrote. And, most of all, no one was making money off of re-using my stuff without permission--that's a key point. I'll almost always share info or readily authorize a reprint of an article or something, but if it's for someone else to make money off it, well... When major, glossy history magazines reprint an article (of course, they are doing so to sell it again), they always pay the writer; at least that's my experience--several of my articles have been reprinted in special, limited-edition collectible volumes by the magazine that originally published the article in a regular issue; they pay their writers for that, and are good enough to do so without the writer needing to come knock on their door after he or she saw it on the newsstand.
Of course, these magazines also use something that's virtually unknown in the reenactors' writing/researching community: a one- or two-page legal agreement stipulating the terms of use of the author's work. (That I know of, no reenactor-oriented periodical uses such things, whether "Camp Chase Gazette", "Civil War Historian", "Citizens' Companion", "Civil War News", "Civil War Courier", etc.; I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that "Reenactors' Journal (now defunct) and "Smoke and Fire News" do not (or did not) use such agreements. These agreements are nice because 1) Everyone knows what they're agreeing to with the use of the author's work, and 2) The agreement is a very simple form (at least the ones I've signed with periodicals like North and South, Military Heritage, America's Civil War, and others).
There's plagarism of thought--so some folks claim. There's been some fairly well known examples of this in reenacting, where one party claims to have been the first to research or write on, or portray, this or that, and the claim is made that they have exclusive rights to that idea or portrayal. I won't comment on that, but will just say that once upon a time, I was privvy to discussions with someone who was in a snit because he or she claimed to somehow have an exclusive right (or something) to publish works on the Civil War's common Federal soldier. Yes, some folks have made such claims that I've heard of, as preposterous as it may sound. Draw your own conclusion on whether a jury would call that "plagarism". If it was, then the estates of folks like Wilbur Hindman and John Billings would sue the estate of Bell I. Wiley, not to mention many reenactors!
Then there's other, more notorious examples of plagarism, where even a blind man can see that a certain act constitutes plagarism. These are the cases where the plagarist litererally retypes the original work without knowledge or consent of the original author and, with little or no editing to even attempt to disguise it, sells it to someone else while representing it as his or her own work. It's difficult to argue that such behavior is anywhere near "proper" or ethical.
The thing about reenactors plagarizing reenactors, as Paul and Justin appear to be pointing out in their posts above, is that it may well discourage folks from further publishing their research. Should plagarism do that, it's a loss to the community because good, documented resarch prepared for use by reenactors is all too often a rarity, and heavens knows, more of it is certainly needed to keep the hobby moving forward.
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