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Social Responses To Plagiarism in the Eclipse Phase Setting

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Fri, 2014-01-10 20:10

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Social Responses To Plagiarism in the Eclipse Phase Setting

One thing that is emphasized again and again in the setting is that one of the biggest legal battles in the setting is over the concept of Intellectual Property: Copyright vs. Open Source. There are many other conflicts in the setting, but that one point is at the core of a great deal of the setting's economics, social functions and legal concepts. Which brings me to the question: How do the various factions, on both ends of the IP scale, react to plagiarism? Not Open Source--Plagiarism, the act of taking something that you didn't create and publishing it as your own, denying the identity of the original creator in the process? Given that one of the fundamental underpinnings of the Rep economy is taking credit for your own deeds and contributions, I could see plagiarism being treated much like counterfeiting is by a capitalistic society--with a strong degree of overkill, with known plagiarists taking big hits to their rep, and serial plagiarists quickly ending up with Black Marks and being Blacklisted. In the Argonauts, it might be even worse; given how modern academia reacts to plagiarism, I can only imagine how nasty the response would be in the faction that is composed of pretty much nothing but academics. Even in Extropia, where copyright cracking is one of the major industries, plagiarists wouldn't be looked upon kindly, because you didn't create that product, someone else did, so you're robbing them of the opportunity to make a fully informed choice regarding your product. Question inspired by [url=http://distinguishedbaloney.tumblr.com/post/72675878936]this[/url]. Thoughts?

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Fri, 2014-01-10 23:50

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

I'd say that the only people

I'd say that the only people who like plagiarism are plagiarists. Even Extropians, Titanians and Collectivists who routinely crack DRM and flagrantly wipe their arses with the inner-system's notions on intellectual property are still going to be scrupulously careful to give credit where credit is due. It's not hard to imagine that the blueprint file-shares will list the engineers who worked on the project, the company who made it, and the hard-working hackers who broke the DRM to let anyone print it in an open CM. So actually taking credit for someone else's work? Well, you'd better have killed them and everyone who knew they were working on it, popped their stacks and tossed 'em in a nanorecycling bin. Getting caught plagiarizing should get you a Black Mark and heavily dinged the firsts time on every rep network affected by it. @-Rep, r-Rep, c-Rep; nobody likes a plagiarist. Twice should get you blacklisted on RNA and dinged down to barely-survivable on the others; thrice gets you blacklisted. Even g-rep, though with criminals the reason for the black marks/dings won't be that you did it, it'll be that you got [b]caught[/b].

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