High School Soccer Plagiarism?

And soccer isn't boring.

 

You know, writers at weeklies can make phone calls. Sometimes, we even do our own interviews.

And on some of those occasions, it's the daily doing the lifting, not the other way around.

Just sayin'.

 

OOOOOOOHHHHHHH OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH

WOODY GOT FUCKIN' SERVED!

 

haha, I wasn't trying to rip weeklies. I just know the dude, he never shows up to games, and when he does, he's always late and asks to "borrow" my stats.

This is a guy that was a junior in college when I was a senior, and in a class we had together he got busted for quoting his girlfriend in a story.

 

The guy wasn't at the game, and the coach at this school doesn't keep track of which minute the goals are scored in.

 

I agree. This isn't plagiarism. I had a football day signing story from last Thursday plagiarized literally word-for-word by a Web site Saturday.

 

The very act of being present at the game doesn't give you a copyright on what happened there. One cannot copyright facts.

 

Fair enough, if the dude in question has a track record. To give him the benefit of the doubt -- whether he deserves it or not -- he still could have possibly found another way to get a box score, though. And Squid's got it right; box scores don't exactly fit the guidelines of "intellectual property." From the AP Stylebook: ideas and facts are never protected by a copyright.

Not like, say, writing a 1000-word feature on someone from a one-on-one interview, running it on Page 1 of our paper, then seeing one of the local dailies copy it off my blog and print an edited version in their sports section four days later ... without attribution.
Not that I'm bitter or anything, in case you were wondering why I snarled.

 

Or like writing a story on a local coach who started lacrosse in your area, calling him "the founding father of bumfuck lacrosse," then seeing most of your story in state's big paper sports section from their head prep writer.
Fuckin daily guys.

 

Did you go after them, Rhody? We are.

Like I told my friends -- shit, they could've used the quotes, but they were too lazy to write their own damn story around them? C'mon.

 

Nah ... his was a throwaway notebook item. The guy did like three grafs - and they read exactly like my story.

 

And reporters are a "who", not a "that"