Ask HN: Techcrunch plagiarized my article...what can/should I do?
http://entreprenormal.com/post/1009185254/where-oh-where-should-my-groupon-clone-go
which then got syndicated on SAI. http://www.businessinsider.com/where-should-your-groupon-clone-go-2010-8#ixzz0ywbNxsez
Here is my part: In terms of choosing cities based on deal services, there are currently estimates of 150 Groupon Clones — with such low barriers to entry, it’s really difficult to know of (be aware of) each Deal provider in every city. They’re popping up left and right, and with Group Buying really getting hot in the summer, I expect a bunch of deals in other verticals to start popping up in the fall, specifically on college campuses (CampusDibs.com). These are places where populations can change dramatically (think Game Day at Penn State when 100,000+ people come to see a football game) and could take flash-mob deals to a whole new level. Look out for daily deals on campus at schools with large student bodies and a vibrant college town: OSU, Arizona State, Florida, Minnesota, UT Austin, Michigan State, Penn State, but remember, size isn’t everything, right Washington, D.C.?
here is their part:
If you doubt Campus Dibs’ chances for setting itself apart from the 800 or so daily deals sites out there, just imagine the power of the 50k plus populations of college campuses and alumni coupled with the mob mentality of group buying sites.
Picture briefly what a deal tie-in might mean for the student store, especially at campuses with pretty fanatical populations and hopping college towns. I’m looking at you USC, Penn State, Arizona State, Michigan State, OSU, and UT Austin who are among the campuses covered by Campusdibs.
sound familiar?
UPDATE: just wanted to highlight another point I made below:
*
In my analysis, I did a google search for "colleges by student population" and got this as the top link:
http://www.happyschoolsblog.com/largest-us-universities-by-student-population/
The list was created from 2006 data. One thing to notice, I skipped over Texas A&M and University of South Florida and picked up Penn State (because I'm from Jersey, and half of my high school went there).
The TC article article also omits these two schools, and adds in UCLA and USC. (The author is a USC grad herself.) Even if she did find the same list, why also skip over A&M and USF?
a more accurate list would have come from more recent data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_colleges_by_enrollment
Yes, it's possible, but I think pretty unlikely she'd independently decide to drop the same two schools that I did, assuming she found the same source.
37 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 81.2 ms ] threadMine:
http://entreprenormal.com/post/1009185254/where-oh-where-sho...
http://www.businessinsider.com/where-should-your-groupon-clo...
TC's: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/campusdibs/
Aside from whether they did plagiarize your article, there's pretty much nothing you can do. Even if they had cut and pasted your article verbatim, I doubt you could do much other than maybe email some other bloggers with an axe to grind against TC and see if they'd throw some gas on the fire for you. But with something this vague? Good luck :-/
it doesn't have to be verbatim. even if she got some bit of inspiration from me, when in doubt she should source her story.
i agree that i can't really do anything, which is why I'm asking HN...
I'm not trying to burn Alexia, Arrington, or TC, but I think she conveyed my ideas as her own, and would think she'd source her idea...
I wrote the article as my own analysis of the Gap Groupon campaign because I'm fascinated with local commerce (last website I built was a local events finder -- deadpooled, but http://www.prximity.com)
Even if they recycled your "idea" they didn't do it consistently enough to constitute plagiarism en masse and your basic idea isn't unique enough to really warrant attribution.
You mention 150 clones, they say 800. You mention 100k people in reference to one particular occasion at one particular school. They mention 50k people and don't mention the same occasion, even though they mention the same school. They mention a mob mentality, the closest you have is "flash-mob deals," whatever that means. You mention the importance of a vibrant college town, they say nothing of the sort. You talk about other services likely to pop up. They focus just on Campus Dibs. They mention alumni, you don't.
What exactly do you feel they plagiarized? I don't see a single similar element between the quotes you gave except overall topic.
These are places where populations can change dramatically (think Game Day at Penn State when 100,000+ people come to see a football game) and could take flash-mob deals to a whole new level. Look out for daily deals on campus at schools with large student bodies and a vibrant college town"
She basically changed "populations can change dramatically" and "large student bodies" to "fanatical" and vibrant to "hopping"...not to mention almost the exact same list of college towns + her alma mater
Just because bats can fly doesn't mean they evolved from birds.
TC wrote a similar article with similar points, that doesn't mean that they stole from you.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
I do not see this as plagiarism. They might have read your article and used it as one of many facets to their own but does not look like plagiarism.
Now, journalism is not held to high standards for this sort of thing, especially tech journalism.
Now, with that said, while it's definitely possible that this happened, can you even prove that the author read your article? If you can't prove that they were influenced - and it certainly isn't obvious from what they wrote - then there's little to nothing you can do about it, because no one else can be certain that any plagiarism did occur. In fact, neither can you, so be careful because you're leveling a pretty serious accusation with no proof.
And, on Sept 3 one of the co-founders even referenced my article again...so the founders were actively talking about it.
http://twitter.com/scottpony/status/22894399146
She probably did copy the examples, I doubt two independent people would come up with the exact same list of examples unless both plagiarized from a third source.
The list was created from 2006 data. One thing to notice, I skipped over Texas A&M and University of South Florida and picked up Penn State (because I'm from Jersey, and half of my high school went there).
The TC article article also omits these two schools, and adds in UCLA and USC. (The author is a USC grad herself.) Even if she did find the same list, why also skip over A&M and USF?
a more accurate list would have come from more recent data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_colleges_...
Yes, it's possible, but I think pretty unlikely she'd independently decide to drop the same two schools that I did, assuming she found the same source.
"Steal from one person, that's plagiarism. Steal from many, that's research"
I don't think that you're going to gain anything by kicking up a fuss about this in public. Much better to respond to them quietly and try and get retro-active attribution. But they don't need to do that, and they haven't done anything particularly evil, novel or noteworthy by taking your article and writing it in their own words. I think that you're over-reacting to something that happens a lot in modern fast-paced journalism. You may not like it, but I think that it is normal and accepted so you must either work with TC and ask if they would like to syndicate some of the stuff that you write in the future, write-off the incident as a life lesson or stop writing easily rephraseable articles...