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Tuesday May 26, 2009 |
The mainstream media has picked up on the story involving Conference Board of Canada's Digital Economy report and concerns about plagiarism and inaccuracies. The Ottawa Citizen features a lengthy piece on the front page of the paper that frames the issue as part of the larger battle over copyright policy (the Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, and National Post pick up the same story). The Ottawa Citizen's Vito Pilieci includes a screen shot on his blog that demonstrates that the Conference Board is now promoting its inaccurate headline on its front page.
IT Business also covers the story with the only direct information from the Office of the Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson. A spokesperson says that the Government paid $15,000 to the Conference Board to support the report and this week's conference. Spokesperson Grahame Rivers told IT Business that "these are serious allegations. We take any charge of plagiarism seriously. We will be following up and look forward to hear what they [Conference Board of Canada] have to say about this." The story has also attracted huge attention online, with blog postings here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareTuesday May 26, 2009 |
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Monday May 25, 2009 |
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The Conference Board of Canada has issued a response to my posting on its Digital Economy report. The organization defends the report, arguing that there was only one case of a missed citation (which it has corrected) and acknowledging that "some of the cited paragraphs closely approximate the wording of a source document." It claims that it conducted a full review of the various arguments and included "those arguments considered most relevant to the policy under review." Since this is contract research funded by the copyright lobby groups and the Ontario government, the Conference Board refuses to disclose the terms of the contract.
Leaving aside the fact that all the most relevant arguments just happen to come from a U.S. lobby group with direct links to the funders of the Digital Economy report, the Conference Board of Canada has failed to understand the rules associated with plagiarism as a sprinkling of citations is simply not good enough. As the University of Ottawa's plagiarism guidelines (which are mirrored in academic institutions around the world) note "if you use someone else's words, data, etc., use quotation marks and give a complete reference." The Digital Economy report repeatedly used the same or very similar wording to the IIPA document and does not use quotations. Moreover, my posting cited to factual errors contained within the report and the press release. For example, the Conference Board claimed that the OECD concluded that Canada is the world's file sharing capital on a per capita basis. This is simply false as anyone who reads the OECD report will find that it did not reach that conclusion. Nevertheless, the Conference Board has chosen not to respond to this issue.
Admitting an error is never easy, but I would submit that the Conference Board of Canada has compounded its mistake by standing by its report. In doing so, it has done little more than further undermine its credibility. Particularly given that public dollars helped fund this report, Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson should provide his views on whether his government regards this as appropriate use of taxpayer money. Update (5:15): Brian Jackson of IT Business reports that the Minister's office acknowledges spending $15,000 on the report. It plans to follow up on the issues raised in my post.
Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareMonday May 25, 2009 |
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Thursday May 01, 2008 |
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With all the talk this week about the PPF conference, the Conference Board of Canada is out with its own two-day conference in late May that is the most unbalanced Canadian copyright conference in recent memory. Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareThursday May 01, 2008 |
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