[Taxacom] Botanical Plagiarism

[Gregor Hagedorn]

On 12 March 2013 01:00, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org> wrote:
> 1) Ripping off an entire regional checklist from someone else and
> reproducing it verbatim as though it was new original work, is something
> that our community should scorn (whatever the legalities of copyright are).

Correct. There are moral rights and good practices. You can loose your
academic status if you not cite your sources, COMPLETELY REGARDLESS of
whether it is a copyright violation. Often it is not. I would say: a
novelist or poet should focus on copyright, a scientist should focus
on the codes of practice of science. The two are not the same.

---

One correction: there seem to be general assumption in this thread
that "opinion" is copyrightable. Under international law this is NOT
correct.

Basically, it would be copyrightable if it would be just a very
creative, largely unsupported opinion. But then you loose your status
as a scientist. If you carefully analyse the available information and
form an educated scientific opinion which you do or can argue about
the reasoning, then this is not creative. It very hard work, it is
excellent and valuable work, but not creative in the sense of
copyright according to the Berne Convention.

Einstein with his invention was "creative" in the sense of thinking in
new ways, it was hard work elaborating them, but the theories are NOT
copyrighted, they are not "creative" in the sense of Copyright.

Gregor