More Questionable Use of My Work
While surfing the web today, I was surprised to find, in an OpenWiki installation on a web page published by the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science & Management (University of California, Santa Barbara), a document containing a subtantial amout of my own work. The OpenWiki document in question states that it has been reproduced with my permission, but that text refers to the (belated) permission I gave when I discovered the first copy that Bren School made.
When I initially found the first copy, I saw that references to me and my institution had been removed, and the site was republished under the Bren School banner. I did give belated permission, provided that my name and institutional affiliation be restored to the document, and that a prominent link direct readers to my current version.
I did not, however, give permission for yet anothercopy to be made, and neither was I asked my opinion about releasing the document in an open format (which would permit multiple authors to modify and change the text even further).
The latest copy on the Bren site still offers my name, but now neither version contains a link to the current version. Life is too short to get mad, and I am a supporter of both the wiki genre and the open source movement, but this is the second time somebody at the Bren School has misappropriated my work for its instructional purposes.
Update, 11 Dec: A few minutes after midnight, about six hours after I contacted the Bren School, I received an e-mail apology, stating that the material had been removed. I’m grateful for the speedy reaction.
Post was last modified on 7 Jan 2012 10:12 pm
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Thanks, Rosemary. I think that demanding that they remove even the crossed-out text is probably taking it too far. If that text ever gets into a search engine, I might feel differently about it, but I think I'm satisfied now.
It looks like the Bren pages have been removed or edited yesterday deleting the text - check out the diff link at the bottom of the 3rd link above.
...and of course, as I mentioned in my log, I am NOT an accredited source.
Oddly enough, I have just had to face this possibility myself on my blog--mainly because of students'hits on some of my short story commentaries--and only one student was smart enough to contact me directly as to citation for an essay. I directed her to your site for MLA rules, but could you please post the proper citing form of a weblog? I believe it would be similar to a website, but your bringing it up to the surface right now might help us all out. Thanks!