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Any legal experts? Plagiarism

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    Any legal experts? Plagiarism

    Normally I don't go poking around for free legal advice, but I was somewhat curious to know who's in the right in the eyes of the law here.

    Until recently I wrote hardware reviews for a large AV Forum. They own the copyright on the reviews written for them.

    However, since my absence, they've published a review of a similar TV to one I reviewed. The new review contains passages of text which I wrote, often with only minor alterations made to suit the new content. However, my name does not appear anywhere on the new article, it is entirely attributed to someone else.

    My understanding is that, although they have the right to exploit the reviews I wrote for them as they see fit, they have to credit me as the original author, and attributing a review that I wrote parts of to someone else is considered plagiarism. Is that the case?

    #2
    If they have the copyright on the review, then yeah they can publish, but I believe they are required to cite the original author where applicable.

    I'd contact them first, ask what exactly is going on...then go from there.

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      #3
      In a previous job, I would "re-write" national newspaper articles for press packs. This actually meant copying it and changing the odd word here and there. As long as at least one word was changed we could get away with it, and the Copyright Licensing Agency couldn't say anything. We never had to credit the original author either.
      Kept you waiting, huh?

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        #4
        In the past I've got all excited about this sort of thing with our reviews, but now just see it as a compliment.

        I'd just ask them something along the lines of "It appears that text has been lifted from my review. Please can you consider adding me to the credits for the article?" Perhaps with a compliment about the site and other banter. It's far more likely to end in a result than going in guns blazing.

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          #5
          You've signed over your copyright that means they can do almost whatever they want with your text sadly.

          Dick move to not credit you though. All you can do in return is publicise that they've lifted text from your reviews.

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            #6
            Thanks all, I'll probably mention it to them at some point.
            If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then I guess they think very highly of the review indeed. Be interesting to see if this will be a recurring theme.

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              #7
              Are you saying that since you left that site you've written a review elsewhere and they've copied that article? If the "new" article is by a new contributor you could just point it out to the site owners, they might not be aware of the plagiarism.

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                #8
                Yep, they may not even know.

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