Authorship gets lost on Web

AUTHORSHIP GETS LOST ON WEB
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Del Jones]
The Internet is becoming a cesspool of plagiarism. In some quarters, plagiarism remains a serious offense. But where it involves the Internet, an acceptance of plagiarism is taking hold, and when confronted, offenders often shrug it off as hardly newsworthy. Pew Research two weeks ago said it found that of the 12 million adults who blog, 44% say they have taken songs, text or images and “remixed” them into their own artistic creation. A new twist is software used by spammers to automatically and intentionally grab original content to post on blogs and Internet sites. Authors are byproduct victims of an attempt to draw traffic to the content so that readers will click on deceiving links that take them to advertising. It's going to take a high-profile legal case to slow it down, says Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbria, which companies hire to monitor the Internet and report back what is being said about them and competitors.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20060801/net_plagiarism.art.htm