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The Mythical Major Caudill
Interesting story here. In 2007, a blogger writes "Why the Gun Is Civilization," an essay that begins "Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force." It argues that weaponry eliminates the ability to use force, requires reasoning, and thus is an underpinning of a civilized society.
By late 2007, the article is on other internet locations, but attributed to an apparently mythical "Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)." How or why it wound up attributed to that name is unknown.
And now, the essay winds up as two pages of Ted Nugent's latest, "Ted, White and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto," and attributed to the mythical Major. If anyone's in touch with Uncle Ted, they might want to give him a heads up to the problem.
12 Comments
"In academe you get a low grade."
Actually, now, if you get caught you usually get an F on the assignment, and if you're really lucky, you might not get kicked out of the course and/or the university.
They take plagiarism seriously these days.
When I was in school, the policy was expulsion for plagiarism. I give zero grades (much worse than an F) in middle school for it. It sounds harsh, but if you stick to it consistently, you soon find you don't have to use it very often.
I believe Marko has retained representation and is in contact with Nugent.
I read that essay by Markos and kept a copy since it was so well written. I suggest he asks politely. I do not know if he copywrote it or not. I do not know copyright law that well.
I am sure he will get credit and perhaps a small monetary compensation
To Anonymous who posted at 5:51 p.m.: One doesn't have to do anything to copyright something. If you write it, you hold the copyright on it. It's that simple. Assuming Markos didn't lift the words from someone else, he holds the copyright on that essay. Ask politely? Well, it's always nice to be polite. Even smarter, have his lawyer write a really polite and gracious demand letter.
"Ask politely? Well, it's always nice to be polite."
I caught a few minutes of some television show where Nugent was giving a tour of his house, his property, and his guns. The house was huge and complex, but it took longer to tour all of his guns.
So, I'm thinking that being polite to Ted would be way beyond "nice" and would probably extend all the way over into "smart."
Nice to follow the link over and see why I don't read those people's pages (author and commentors) anymore. Dogpile somebody before you find out all the facts just like you do about technical/technique issues as often as not. Makes you look both well meaning, clever, and, "snarky" in your own minds.
Intent makes plagiarism in my book. Until one of you finds intent, oh, never mind...you wouldn't understand anyway and you're already probably trying to find a tree to hang him from in effigy...
Why would anyone say what Ted did was plagiarism?
He attributed it to the person that he thought had done it. That attribution was wrong. So the real person contacts Ted and gets it fixed. Why bring any lawyers into it until they are needed for some reason?
Start off with a lawyer and most likely you will realy need a lawyer. Start off just contacting the person and talking over the problem and you may fond that a lawyer is not needed at all to make everyone happy. If you find things NOT working out then get the lawyer.
This isn't a slap at lawyers but if a lawyer is comming after you, another lawyer is the best shield. And who profits most? The lawyers. that is after all their job.
BTW the fact that Ted has a lot of guns means nothing about him using them. You have been listening to much to the Libs.
"Why would anyone say what Ted did was plagiarism?"
Because he committed plagiarism. It's not enough to merely cite the author in a work published for commercial profit (Ted's book was not an academic paper). Ted is legally required to obtain permission from the copyright holder (in this case, the original author, Marko Kloos) before publishing a copyrighted work.
Dave,
Where's my comment go? It was here for more than a day, and is now gone...
The owner's anti-comment-spam software is set on trigger-happy.
If he is out for the week, he can't fix friendly-fire incidents until he gets back.
Marko just published a post on his blog: the issue has been resolved with the Nugent folks, and all is well in the world.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
However, I’m not sure that plagiarism fits into that equation. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I’m close. An employee of a large government agency involved with space travel has plagiarized me. At least he changed “happy” to “glad.” My article was stolen from a refereed journal, so someone is going to eventually notice. I found it with an unintended google search. I was somewhat taken aback – flattered, but at the same time angered. As we say in the business “stealing many peoples work is research – stealing one persons work is plagiarism.” In academe you get a low grade. In the publishing industry you get sued.
Marko Kloos wrote an excellent article, I hope eventually the credit will return to him.