Mac Diva gives a good rundown of the Sean-Paul Kelley (aka the Agonist) plagiarism bit (click here for the Wired story). I agree with most of what she has to say, and an anecdotal piece that leads me to believe he is still up to no good- at least finding links and then not providing the obligatory (as far as netiquette goes) hat tip.
At any rate, Sean-Paul today posted an interesting story about children jailed by Hussein being released by the Marines. He posted the story at 2:23 EST, and the site he linked to was an from Spacewar.com.
All well and good- if I hadn’t posted the same damn story, ten minutes earlier, on the Command Post.
Guess what- two major coincidences! I used the spacewar.com link too! So did Sean-Paul- ten minutes later! Weird coincidence, considering it was widely reported by a number of news sources other than a site called SPACEWARS.COM.
Another weird coincidence- before this, Sean-Paul had NEVER cited the spacewars.com cite. Guess what this leads me to believe?
Yeah- Sean-Paul’s news collection method is to read other people’s weblogs and then to post the information to his cite. Classy- but then again, he is an unrepentant plagiarist (although he claims to have learned something- probably something he should have known before, mainly that publishing someone else’s copyrighted material as your own work is dishonest, illegal, and highly unethical).
In fairness, this could be just a weird bunch of coincidences, but then again, Sean-Paul has no credibility. He will probably be working at the NY Times in a matter of weeks. Also- let me be clear- I am not accusing him of being a plagiarist (that much is already proven). Nope- just someone incapable of proper netiquette. Check the Command Post Archives- when we have seen something on his site, we attribute it to him. But then again, we are not self-centered promotion hounds with inflated egos and deflated sense of right and wrong.
I must also disclose that I haven’t liked Sean-Paul since he wrote an obnoxious screed claiming that he, and only he had come to an enlightened position regarding the war. The rest of us were just bloody warmongerers.
*** Update ***
The delighfully crabby Andrea Harris has some comments on the issue.
90210
What is your complaint exactly? He read about something, went to the source, and blogged about it. Happens a million times a day in blogland. Do you think you’re the only person to blog about Michael Kelly, for example? Or did you “read other people’s weblogs and then to post the information to [your] cite [sic]”?
Andrea Harris
Well, Mr-or-Miss 90210, it wouldn’t matter if Kelly wasn’t being touted (after touting himself) as a “war news source.” Yeah, Sean-Paul Kelly, Human News Aggregator. According to his many sycophantic fans, they use him as a source of “unbiased” news reporting, unadulterated by any of that icky opinion stuff. They have also made it clear that they like the way he does things, and are perfectly unconcerned with his thievery. Perhaps they believe, as he does, that “intellectual property is theft.” Whatever.
John Cole
Most people, when that happens, have the decency of writing (via The Command Post), or (Hat Tip: The Command Post).
Otherwise, he is just being a lazy bastard letting us do the work for his own benefit.
Emily
I’m with you, John. Sure, there are certain articles that we’re all, being news junkies and such, going to run across by coincidence. But no matter how obvious an article is, no matter how widely linked, etc., if I saw the link first on somebody else’s site, I always note it, even if it’s a site like Drudge or Newshound. After all, it’s somebody else’s work that led me there. They deserve some credit for that.
That’s what he’s talking about, 90210 (if that is, in fact, your real name). Not folks commenting on the same news item, but finding links to a particular story on another site and not mentioning that you didn’t find it on your own.