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Conference Board Plagiarism Story Front Page News For Second Day

The Conference Board of Canada's Digital Economy report makes the front page once again as the Ottawa Citizen runs a second major story on the questions raised by its report.  Following on yesterday's front page story on plagiarism concerns, the paper today reports on the Conference Board's decision to ignore an independent report it commissioned that contradicted many of its conclusions.  As Cory Doctorow has noted, this suggests that "they went into this project knowing what conclusions they wanted to draw, and ignored everyone – even their own researchers – who had anything different to say."

In addition to the Ottawa Citizen story, there is coverage from the CBC along with a stinging article from the Vancouver Sun's Gillian Shaw titled "Will the Real Blackbeard Please Stand Up", which asks "could it be a report accusing Canada of being the pirating capital of the world used pirated material?"  Moreover, there is mounting international coverage with postings in Germany and Italy.

Despite the outrage over the issue, the Conference Board of Canada seems determined to stand its ground, ignoring the factual inaccuracies, the violation of plagiarism principles for appropriate citation, and its own commissioned research.

6 Comments

  1. eyes open says:

    Going Viral?
    I was trying to track all the links down. So far I came up with these below. If someone wants to add to it, please feel free. It would be interesting to see how far it reaches. (i’m not sure if links work on this blog):

    http://www.p2pnet.net/story/22226

    http://www.p2pnet.net/story/22321

    http://www.jeremydebeer.ca/content/view/254/2/

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/05/26/conference-geist-copyright.html

    http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?aid=1000327102

    http://www.mediacastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?aid=1000327226

    http://www.canada.com/Business/File+sharing+report+that+slammed+Canada+plagiarized+Expert/1629172/story.html

    http://www.vancouversun.com/Business/File+sharing+report+slamming+Canada+plagiarized/1630383/story.html

    http://www.timescolonist.com/Business/Conference+Board+accused+deception/1631044/story.html

    http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=1631150

    http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=53299&PageMem=3

    http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=53299

    http://www.mri.gov.on.ca/english/about/MinisterBio.asp

    http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/25/canadian-think-tax-s.html

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/011478.html#comments

    http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/25/plagiarising-canadia.html

    http://distlib.blogs.com/distlib/2009/05/geist-calls-out-the-conference-board-of-canada.html

    http://www.robhyndman.com/2009/05/25/a-breathtaking-act-of-intellectual-dishonesty-by-the-conference-board-of-canada/

    http://whatisthemessage.blogspot.com/2009/05/conference-board-of-canada-intellectual.html

    http://www.pogge.ca/archives/002334.shtml

    http://mtippett.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/report-on-piracy-digital-economy-slammed-by-expert-2/

    http://www.ccer.ca/uncategorized/conference-board-of-canadas-blatant-plagiarism/

    http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2009/05/conference-board-of-canada-copyright.html

    http://archival-objects.blogspot.com/2009/05/boing-boing-geist-nail-the-conference.html

    http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86311/conference-board-of-canada-pirates-report-to-call-for-tough-action-against-piracy/

    http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86313/report-ignored-independant-research-digital-economy-report-fiasco-widens/

    http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/05/25/3-count-last-plagiarism/

    http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=49066

    http://www.ambitonline.com/nextrelease/archives/140-lets-just-call-it-the-canadian-conference-board-of-incompetence.html

    http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Canada+seen+world+Blackbeard/1627146/story.html

    http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Business/Debate+intensifies+over+independent+think+tank+report+copyright/1633218/story.html

    http://www.straight.com/article-223274/blog-tech-conference-board-ignored-independent-study-commissioned-report

    http://slashdot.org/submission/1007365/Canada-Conf-Bd-Found-Plagiarizing-Copyright-Report

    http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bitsandbytes/archive/2009/05/25/leading-canadian-researcher-accused-of-plagiarism.aspx

    http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Business/Debate+intensifies+over+independent+think+tank+report+copyright/1633218/story.html

    http://www.intern.de/news/neue–meldungen/–200905265678.html

    http://punto-informatico.it/2631748/PI/News/canada-quel-rapporto-anti-p2p-un-plagio.aspx

  2. eyes open says:

    Going Viral
    I see nothing in Quebecore media yet (i.e. Videotron owners).
    I’m not sure if I should be surprised or not.

  3. Stephen van Egmond says:

    Splendid
    The opportunity to give a public, richly deserved, kick in the nuts doesn’t come along very often. The gall to plagiarize a report on digital piracy!

    Well done, sir.

    Irony of the day: the comment captcha wants me to type “international gestapo”.

  4. Unfortunately, this is not surprizing
    How many special interest groups only publish studies they’ve commissioned that support their point of view. Big Pharma was caught doing this.


  5. Both Stephen J. Toope, President and Vice-Chancellor, The University of British Columbia and Indira V. Samarasekera, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Alberta, should resign from the Board of Directors of the Conference Board of Canada ASAP. How can they face the students at their institution? I’m surprised that the Student Unions at these universities have not picked up on this — this is front page news stuff!

  6. Highly doubtful that Samarasekera sees anything wrong in report
    I encourage President Samarasekera to respond to these calls for her resignation from the BOD or the CBofC. However, I doubt she sees anything wrong with such plagiarism. While her institution punishes students for plagiarism, her institution defends plagiarism when used for non-academic purposes, such as government=related documents (e.g Ralph Klein essay) or US patent creation. The UofA calls it “acceptable plagiarism”.