Plagiarising Canadian think tank who used tax dollars to shill for Big Content refuses to back down

The Conference Board of Canada, who were caught plagiarising in a report on the Digital Economy, produced at the Ontario tax-payers' expense, have responded. They claim it's not plagiarism or intellectual dishonesty that led them to copy-and-paste from an American entertainment lobby group's materials, it's just that the corporate mouthpieces of the record, film and software industries happened to have published the best, most balanced account of copyright in the digital age. As Michael Geist points out, their definition of plagiarism wouldn't pass muster at any university, and the report they copied is wrong, wrong, wrong.

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.

Conference Board of Canada Responds, Stands By Its Report

• [zuzu]

  I <3 Michael Geist.

• [arkizzle]

  That two-bit, seebeeosey bastard!

  /mouthful

  Seebok does have a nice angry ‘k’ at the end, to really spit out, though. And seebokkery spins nicely for an accusation; I call patent seebokkery!

• [Anonymous]

  Big Content? Hah. You guys are big content now.

• [Anonymous]

  Plagiarizing is one thing, hosing is another. $1975.00 for electronic access to Provincial Outlook: Economic Forecast, Spring 2009.
  http://www.informz.net/conferenceboard/archives/archive_789643.html

• [arkizzle]

  I’m with the Conference Board of Canada on this.

  And when I re-release my version of Snow White, featuring 80% original Disney footage, I won’t be plagerizing either. It’s just that Walt Disney “happened to have published the best, most balanced account of” Snow White and the seven dwarves, and all I’ll be doing is localizing and updating to be relevant to our times.

  I think we can all get along just fine under this new definition of plagerism.

• [Takuan]

  henceforth; when “The CBOC” is appended to anything whatsoever it shall designate that the forgoing is a deliberate unattributed quotation. Let all dictionaries, lexicons and thesauri show “The Conference Board of Canada” alongside, “plagiarism, fraud and intellectual property theft”.

  (whaddya think: “seebokking”? eg: “He really got away with a complete seebokking on that one!” or do you have something more musical?)

• [mneptok]

  I’d like to tell you a little bit about the work I do. I’m sorry to use BB as a springboard for the development of my own company, but I think a lot of readers could really benefit from my work:

  * The foremost, independent, not-for-profit applied research organization in my home.

  * Objective and non-partisan. We do not lobby for specific interests.

  * Funded exclusively through the fees we charge for services to the private and public sectors.

  * Experts in running conferences but also at conducting, publishing, and disseminating research; helping people network; developing individual leadership skills; and building organizational capacity.

  * Specialists in economic trends, as well as organizational performance and public policy issues.

  * Not a government department or agency, although we are often hired to provide services for all levels of government.

  * Independent from, but affiliated with, The bOING-bOING Commenters Guild of R’leyh, which serves nearly 2,000,000,000 hairless monkeys in 60 nations and has offices in Middle-Earth and the sixteenth century.

  I should also mention that among independent research organizations, our copy and paste skills are recognized as industry leaders. Our work is governed by the proven adage that, “attribution is for pussies.”

  Also, if you’re interested in honing your copy and paste skills, being a lazy industry shill, and learning to make “attribution” a four letter word, clicky el linky.

• [braininavat]

  Well of course the Conference Board of Canada is not going to back down on this, these kind of blow-hards never do, they just try to brazen it out. Organizations of their type exist exclusively to promulgate a particular point of view and the only way they can be stopped is continuous public resistance, issue by issue.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s interesting that if you go to that link and then search for the word Liars.

  Search the Conference Board of Canada

  Advanced Search

  Search took 0.01 seconds.

  Your search – liars – did not match any documents.
  No pages were found containing “liars”.

  Suggestions:

  * Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
  * Try different keywords.
  * Try more general keywords.

• [High On Markers]

  Once again – great reporting. Have not heard of this story until now.

• [Anonymous]

  Absolutely, we should protect American media more than Canadian media. /sarcasm

  There is no reason to prioritize ‘foreign’ media over domestic — it still amuses (a little) and saddens (a lot) that “Jesus de Montreal” is always in the foreign film section in English Canada’s movie rental business.

  I can’t even get most Canadian media for love or money, so what is this ‘protection’ BS? Their real agenda seems clear — if they can’t charge money for something up front, they’ll extract it after the fact in the form of ‘fines’

  The Internet copying machine has turned the movie and music industries into a Tasmanian Devil — once a genuine animal from Australia, now a copyrighted WB caricature!

• [Anonymous]

  Run it through turnitin. that’s what Stephen Toope (UBC president and member of the Conference Board of Canada board) makes us UBC students do. Then expel him.