Conservapedia:Blatant plagiarism

The abbreviation CP does not just stand for child pornography and Conservapedia. It also stands for copy/paste. Primarily, sysops do this (because they are the ones immune from the hand of justice) to save themselves work by using the copy-paste function on the computers. If users are the ones accused of plagiarizing, they are banned, but Conservapedia retains the article.

The wonders of the internet that have enabled Conservapediaheads to plagiarise so much content, also make it easy to spot such dishonest behaviour; simply highlight a block of text in a 'normal' CP article and search for it using your favourite search engine. More often than not the entire text is ripped from somewhere else.

Here is a very incomplete yet still long list of occurrences. In addition to intellectual integrity, academic honesty and copyright law, Conservapedia Commandments 1 and 2 are relevant here.

Memo to Andy Schlafly: Plagiarism is a sin – and potentially illegal.

Articles with copious amounts of plagiarism

 * Parental Rights Decisions on Conservapedia and on Virginia's Civil Rights & Personal Injury Law Firm (scroll down to "Liberty Interest"). This one courtesy of Andy himself!
 * Boy George
 * Shequida
 * Ellen DeGeneres
 * Tina Turner on Conservapedia, Tina Turner on VH1 and Tina Turner on Squidoo.
 * Henry Moore Conservapedia version, Columbia encyclopedia version (TK)
 * CP:Elie Wiesel (TK)


 * "Potato Incident" on CP copied from "Potato Incident" on WP
 * Adolf Hitler (TK)
 * Bill of Rights (TK)
 * China
 * Clement Atlee (TK)
 * Edwin Meese III (TK)
 * Fox News (TK)
 * Great Depression (TK)
 * LSD (TK)
 * Morality (TK)
 * National Security Agency
 * Robert Byrd
 * Robert Mugabe (TK)
 * Ted Stevens
 * UCLA
 * CDC Vaccine Glossary
 * United States Air Force
 * Russell Kirk (RJJensen)
 * Bombing of Germany (RJJensen)
 * Reno (TK)
 * Conservatives vs. Liberals (TK)
 * Joseph-Louis Lagrange - The article was originally written by PhilG, but JacobB decided to steal credit.
 * Brian Sandoval (TK)
 * Cloward and Piven Strategy (TK)
 * University of Nevada (TK)
 * Dipole antenna (TAR) - originally at: amateur-radio-wiki
 * Yagi antenna (TAR) - originally at: amateur-radio-wiki

Karajou's copy/paste fest

 * Mexican War - Copy & paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of the Wilderness - Copy & paste (Not attributed at first, but added later)
 * Battle of Seven Pines - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Cedar Creek - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Roan's Tan Yard - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Hampton Roads - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Spotsylvania Court House - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Bethel Church - (June 10, 1861) Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Sewell's Point - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)
 * Battle of Aquia Creek - Copy & Paste (Not attributed)

Continue ad nauseum...

Plagiarized article series

 * Most articles written about weather by SharonS are copied from the U.S. National Weather Service. Eye Wall is an excellent example.
 * A series of articles 'written' by cp:user:DrMaine appear to be cut-and-paste jobs. See cp:Argininosuccinicaciduria mentioned above. To be fair PJR and Tash have noted this, but let's see whether they're deleted.
 * Most articles contributed by cp:User:TheAmericanRedoubt are copied from other works, although TAR's attribution is very confusing. (For example, the text of two articles covering books were pasted in from Amazon.com summaries.)  He has posted emails from two authors giving him permission to quote (as fair use), but then when it comes time to paste the material into articles, he fails to add quotation marks.  He has created templates to attribute the material back to a trio of sources without citing back to a specific source.  The permission emails are silent on whether the permission includes further copying by others from CP, so TAR has completely confused the licensing status of Conservapedia.

Image copyright violations
These are images that are copyrighted, used without apparent permission, and with no obvious "fair use" justification. Fri, 8 Feb 2008 7:43 AM Subject: telegraph.co.uk -  Use of phototgraphs. Thanks for your email which has just been forward to me. Any use of our material requires payment of licence fees - we do not operate a fair-use policy without payment - I believe Conservapedia.com have used our image without our permission. Yours, Chi-Keat Man Syndication Account Manager Telegraph Media Group Limited 111 Buckingham Palace Road London SW1W 0DT Tel: +44-20-7931-**** Fax: +44-20-7931-**** Email: ************@telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 * http://www.conservapedia.com/Image:Al_and_GW.png
 * http://www.conservapedia.com/Image:UK_metal_detectors.jpg - Used without permission from the Daily Telegraph web-site (22 Jan 2008) by Aschlafly (This has since been deleted).


 * http://www.conservapedia.com/Image:Tokyo.jpg from http://www.hotelsbycity.net/guides/int/japan/tokyo/ . I (shagie) have contacted the company asking for contact information for the photographer or that the copyright violation information is passed on to the photographer or agency from which the image is licensed.




 * http://www.conservapedia.com/File:A_Merry_Christmas_neon.jpg was "self-made" by TK before changing it to "Fair use". He later burned the evidence, and a newer version of the file was uploaded (changing only the file size). This file was really taken from a now-defunct website.


 * See also wp:User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_61.   — Jeff G. ツ 01:39, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Copyright owner fights back
A picture of the Grand Canyon uploaded by Joaquin with the qualification "Fair Use" was overprinted at the source site with a rebuttal of that justification. It was deleted from Conservapedia!

China
The Conservapedia article on the Republic of China is copied almost entirely from the U.S. State Department article. Because works of the State Department and other agencies of the United States Government are not copyrighted, it isn't strictly required to cite the source, but failure to cite shows bad faith. A few sections were rewritten by editors who actually knew what they were talking about and have since left the site.

KEY:
 * Removed
 * Replaced/moved
 * Added