Plagiarism and Original Research Options

[Ottava]

I have posted this before, but I think it is necessary. Many people say that it is only plagiarism or original research, and that "summaries" are plagiarism. I will put forth my rule of thumb that ensures that both plagiarism and original research can't happen, then explain why people don't follow this.

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - most articles are on non-notable topics. People desperate to promote their favorite thing want to make a large article even though there are few sources. So, they take one sentence to make one sentence. Such was the case of Samus Aran, which ended up lifting passages from video game sites on game mechanics. Such clearly were not needed. However, there were no "books" on the topic so the writer wanting to make the topic seem great had to scrap the bottom of the barrel.

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - summarizing takes thought and some people just can't think.

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.



By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

[jayvdb]

..

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - ...

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - ...

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.

By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

This is a good rule of thumb. In regards to 'winning' and laziness, I'm guessing that DYK is a big cause of this. Article creators want to pad out the article with as much detail as possible in order to qualify for DYK. I know I have done it.

Why are you mentioning Carcharoth here, based on what he 'would do'? That sounds very odd. He isn't the best distiller of information that I've come across but he isn't lazy wrt doing research.

[Milton Roe]

By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

I hate to say this, but you're right.

I should add that the problem is that that WP officially isn't just out to summarize and compress the world's knowledge, but to completely digest and re-present it in full form, hyperlinked, details and all. According officially to Jimbo. So, they have an intractable problem.

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

[Ottava]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

I wouldn't say original "thought" but more of creativity. Creativity is the ability to take what is already present and rework it. It is the use of the imaginative function (ala Hume) combined with deductive reasoning to fill in the blanks. In this case, taking what is big and shrinking it to what is small. Think of fractals, where the tiny aspects are the same as the large but much smaller.

There is definitely an end result based on a previous matter. Does it look different? Sure. Is there some resemblance to the original? Yah. I prefer to think of Dr Evil and Mini Me.

As for what Jimbo wants, feh, who cares. This is just what I want. Me me me me me.




Jayvdb

Why are you mentioning Carcharoth here, based on what he 'would do'?

Go back to January/February where it was revealed that Carcharoth's submissions for the WikiCup had many instances of plagiarism. He then went about cleaning them up.

[Malleus]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

So your premise is that because a machine can't do something then it's impossible? How bizarre.

[Milton Roe]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

So your premise is that because a machine can't do something then it's impossible? How bizarre.

No, I'm merely pointing out that abstracting a work and writing a good summary is a fairly high-level mental task, requiring sentience and sapience. We have computers that can drive a car or play expert chess, but we're not even close to having a computer that can read a book and spit out a book report, let alone a good Cliff's Notes. The basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

As has been pointed out, only a small fraction of people can do this. It's something that not even good fraction of literate people can do.

No, I'm not selling it as the ultimate level of intellect. It's not as hard as being able to (say) read a science journal article and be able to write a decent article abstract or review paper (and yet we'd like Wikipedians who can do that, too!). And this, in turn, is not as hard as actually doing the creative thinking that goes into writing the primary publishable work (whether novel or science paper).

So don't misunderstand me. I don't expect computers to do it for a long, long time. And even when they can, the novelists, engineers, and scientists still won't be out of jobs. Legal secretaries-- maybe. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

[Ottava]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

Sure, the conclusion -may- be true, but it probably isn't and if it was you would only need one source to say it. Multiple refs should only be used to verify a claim that is equally present in them all and to ensure that controversial material is shown to be widely reported.

That doesn't always happen.

[Collect]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

Facts, dry facts, are another matter. The simpler the wording the better. Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Wikipedia is in the conundrum now of saying that exact quotes are bad, and paraphrases are bad (as the original source rarely coincides with the paraphrase). The conumdrum is self-made.

WP should admit that facts, qua facts, are not plagiarism, and that "original idea" copying is plagiarism, even if paraphrased or reworded.

This would even make the whole muddy business comprehensible to outsiders.

I have posted this before, but I think it is necessary. Many people say that it is only plagiarism or original research, and that "summaries" are plagiarism. I will put forth my rule of thumb that ensures that both plagiarism and original research can't happen, then explain why people don't follow this.

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - most articles are on non-notable topics. People desperate to promote their favorite thing want to make a large article even though there are few sources. So, they take one sentence to make one sentence. Such was the case of Samus Aran, which ended up lifting passages from video game sites on game mechanics. Such clearly were not needed. However, there were no "books" on the topic so the writer wanting to make the topic seem great had to scrap the bottom of the barrel.

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - summarizing takes thought and some people just can't think.

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.



By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

[lilburne]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

[jayvdb]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

Facts, dry facts, are another matter. The simpler the wording the better. Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Wikipedia is in the conundrum now of saying that exact quotes are bad, and paraphrases are bad (as the original source rarely coincides with the paraphrase). The conumdrum is self-made.

WP should admit that facts, qua facts, are not plagiarism, and that "original idea" copying is plagiarism, even if paraphrased or reworded.

This would even make the whole muddy business comprehensible to outsiders.

Facts are facts. Embellish them with prose and they are not just facts anymore - they become a stream of facts, ordered in a chosen way to (hopefully) be easy to follow and comprehend.
When someone adds raw facts to Wikipedia, there is very little need to use other peoples sentence structures.

A similar 'problem' applies to free software, whose creators mostly believe that algorithms shouldn't be able to be patented, and often say that algorithms can only be written one way. Rather than ignore copyright concerns in these cases, their founders recommended that creators went out of their way to end up with unmistakably different, and consequently free, source code. GNU took a lot longer than Wikipedia, but their product isn't riddled with copyright problems in their archives.

Quotes and Paraphrasing are useful tools; I don't know why you think they are bad.
It is possible to distill the 'available knowledge' without ending up lost in WP:OR/WP:SYNTH territory.

[SB_Johnny]

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

Sure, the conclusion -may- be true, but it probably isn't and if it was you would only need one source to say it. Multiple refs should only be used to verify a claim that is equally present in them all and to ensure that controversial material is shown to be widely reported.

That doesn't always happen.

Not that I disagree with what you're saying here, but George W Bush, Republicans, Lincoln, Log Cabins, and homosexuality (among other Ottavalogical leaps) come to mind when you in particular say it. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Ottava]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

No.

That is intellectual theft.

Plagiarism is not taking another's ideas. It is taking another's words. You can have words for an unoriginal idea. After all, history books are about things that aren't original.

Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Facts can't, but you can't just list facts. Listing facts would be something like:

* Born -
* Parents -

etc.

Those are called "infoboxes". They don't make good articles. Britannica is copyrighted and if we started copying and pasting their "facts", we would be penalized.

[Milton Roe]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

Yes, lovely example. Now, chocolate becomes more and more colored with the issue of European misuses of other human beings. Sources for all of it. And who are you to say that the emphasis is not proper? Is this not part of the righteous history of chocolate?

There are a million gradations here, also. Why write "wage laborers" instead of "employees"? And is the proper ordering "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" or "enslaved peoples and wage laborers"? Is a ratio of one to the other needed or helpful? If it is historically mostly one over the other (and you found the cites), should the "mostly" go in? How about if we put "enslaved peoples living under high-mortality conditions [ref]."? By the time the writers are done, it's an article from the leftist perspective that should be titled blood chocolate, but of course isn't.

[lilburne]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

Yes, lovely example. Now, chocolate becomes more and more colored with the issue of European misuses of other human beings. Sources for all of it. And who are you to say that the emphasis is not proper? Is this not part of the righteous history of chocolate?

There are a million gradations here, also. Why write "wage laborers" instead of "employees"? And is the proper ordering "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" or "enslaved peoples and wage laborers"? Is a ratio of one to the other needed or helpful? If it is historically mostly one over the other (and you found the cites), should the "mostly" go in? How about if we put "enslaved peoples living under high-mortality conditions [ref]."? By the time the writers are done, it's an article from the leftist perspective that should be titled blood chocolate, but of course isn't.

Well it is the wikipedians that have removed the "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" and replacing it with "an African workforce to help manage". Probably someone had read Nozick.

[Abd]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

No.

That is intellectual theft.

It's also plagiarism. For an actual academic definition of plagiarism, see this pamphlet from Indiana University. If Ottava would like to be perceived as an academic, this is a shocking error, a fundamental one, and I'd recommend he fall all over himself to correct it ASAP. He mostly doesn't take my advice, but he might consider it, specially, in this case.

Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Facts can't, but you can't just list facts. Listing facts would be something like:

* Born -
* Parents -

etc.

Those are called "infoboxes". They don't make good articles. Britannica is copyrighted and if we started copying and pasting their "facts", we would be penalized.

Weird. Several ideas are collapsed here. First of all, very difficult to "penalize" a nonprofit site. A takedown notice would be about the extent of it, it would take egregious and willful copyright violation, provable, to do more than that.

Secondly, every fact in Brittanica, almost without exception, can be found somewhere else. If, however, an article contained fifty facts, and a Wikipedia article, some version, contained the same fifty facts, it is conceivable that copyright violation could be asserted. It is the collection of the facts that can be copyrighted. Maybe. This gets so esoteric that legally it means practically nothing unless someone does it on a large scale from a single source or some other way to make it worth the insane effort to prosecute.

Ottava is dead wrong about "plagiarism," as interpreted in academia, which is where the concern arises. Plagiarism and copyright violation are not the same, though there is a great deal of overlap.

As the pamphlet notes, rewording is not sufficient to avoid plagiarism, it simply makes it more difficult to detect. Plagiarism is defined in the pamphlet as

... using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.

Rlevse clearly plagiarized, but ... so do many, many editors, probably including many of those applying the tar and feathers.

As to "copyvio," fair use probably covers almost all copying on Wikipedia that would otherwise be copyvio. Wikipedia is largely immune to prosecution for this, either as a civil or criminal matter, if it promptly responds to a take-down notice.

In other words, for the community to spend substantial effort trying to enforce complete freedom from copyvio is probably a huge waste of time. Bad idea. There is a potential down side, as well. If a site really does take responsibility for content, as an organization, it is no longer merely an ISP, and not protected as ISPs are protected.

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Wikipedia, in theory, decided not to go this route, but, in one way, went way overboard, and in another, completely ignored plagiarism of the paraphrase kind, that is still potentially copyright violation.

It went way overboard in using copyright violation, for one example, to impugn and impeach and blacklist web sites that may have had occasional "violations" of the "no explicit permission from the publisher" kind, this was one of the excuses used for the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, though no actual proven case of true violation was asserted, merely assumptions.

Example of that: the site puts up nothing without the author actually providing it (the site doesn't scrape content from elsewhere) and giving permission. Legally, this may or may not be enough, i.e., in some cases, the publisher has granted permission to the author to, for example, put up preprints that are identical to the published material, -- except for page formatting and certain other details -- or the publisher may have some special arrangement with an author, and it is practically impossible for the site manager to verify and check this.

I was able to figure out what the web site operator actually does, almost certainly. When the publisher permission is not clear to him, but the author has given permission, he does not badger the author to prove permission, rather he notifies the publisher of the hosting and requests formal permission. He reports that publishers almost never respond at all to these requests. Why should they? They gain nothing at all from wasting time even reading it! If they decide they don't like what the web site is doing, they can easily stop it, and, apparently -- rarely -- they do. It would take them a minute. And so what's crucial for protection is take-down process.

Avoiding all possible copyright violation is useless effort, and where does the labor come from for that?

Of course, the barn door that is left open is that paraphrase is not enough. It is still plagiarism and can still be copyright violation if all that has been done is to shove words around and substitute synonyms, etc., and, as the pamphlet points out, it is likewise still plagiarism. It is not plagiarism if it is attributed and exact quotations are shown as such, typically using quotation marks, but it might still be copyright violation.

Strictly speaking, there is no violation of copyright law if a nonprofit site hosts a "copyvio," which, then, means something that legally must be taken down upon request, or it [i]becomes[/] a violation. A for-profit site can be held to a much higher standard.

Most of what is hosted on Wikipedia, though, would not represent the kind of copyright violation that represents a "loss" for an original publisher. Commons, however, could be an exception, if the image hosted is substantially as useful as the original.... But Wikipedia is still protected as a nonprofit.

This post has been edited by Abd:

[lilburne]

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Well it is scuzzy and it isn't legal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Times_v._Free_Republic

Daily kos banned and deleted loads of users content back in 2006 over cut&pasting entire articles.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/3/19928/53458

[lilburne]

Strictly speaking, there is no violation of copyright law if a nonprofit site hosts a "copyvio,"

That is so wrong. Just because one is a non-profit does not give you immunity from copyright sanctions. Lets face it Thomas-Rasset just got hit for $1.5 million. Even if you have legal status as a non-profit organisation you still won't get away with copyright violation.

[Ottava]

It's also plagiarism. For an actual academic definition of plagiarism, see this pamphlet from Indiana University.

Before you act snide, please read what the pamphlet even says:

"# How to Recognize Unacceptable and Acceptable Paraphrases

* An Unacceptable Paraphrase
* An Acceptable Paraphrase
* Another Acceptable Paraphrase"

The problem with that policy is they call it "Plagiarism" when most Universities call it "Academic Dishonesty". Intellectual Theft, Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, and other problems that Wiki has, along with cheating, all fall under the heading.

By taking it as you took it, you enter into a silly bit of over literalism. An example: "To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use". In using Mathematical formulae, this isn't always necessary. I can use a^2+b^2=c^2 without having to have a footnote saying "Pythagoras" behind it.

First of all, very difficult to "penalize" a nonprofit site.

Non-profits can be sued and fined. Wikipedia has a lot of money and would be destroyed if it was sued for 20 million dollars.

This gets so esoteric that legally it means practically nothing unless someone does it on a large scale from a single source or some other way to make it worth the insane effort to prosecute.

A woman is jailed for stealing 23 songs. It doesn't take much in terms of copyright.

As the pamphlet notes, rewording is not sufficient to avoid plagiarism, it simply makes it more difficult to detect.

You are confusing paraphrasing with "rewording". "Rewording" is also called "close-paraphrasing" which isn't paraphrasing at all.

As to "copyvio," fair use probably covers almost all copying on Wikipedia that would otherwise be copyvio. Wikipedia is largely immune to prosecution for this, either as a civil or criminal matter, if it promptly responds to a take-down notice.

You were already severely pwned on this above with reference to the Freeper matter.


Sigh.

[Abd]

This is worth looking at, because, among other things, it shows the shallow understanding of some editors and, in particular, "lilburn," aka Nastytroll (T-C-L-K-R-D) . If it were just this idiot, I wouldn't bother, but I've seen this same argument from other editors. In fact, maybe Nastytroll is really one of them!

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Well it is scuzzy and it isn't legal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Times_v._Free_Republic

Daily kos banned and deleted loads of users content back in 2006 over cut&pasting entire articles.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/3/19928/53458

"Scuzzy" implies a moral judgment. What's the standard? The behavior described does little or no harm, ordinarily, and the one harmed, if they judge that they are harmed, can stop it immediately with practically no effort. They don't need to spend money, hire a lawyer, all they need to do is send a take-down notice.

There is no criminal offense involved, unless perhaps the claim of "fair use" was totally preposterous and there was intentional harm. Notice the U.S. Copyright Office's document on fair use. I will point out that it notes that "fair use" is complicated. It then gives advice. That advice is not a moral imperative. However, if we look at the standards of fair use, they all protect Wikipedia. It's worth quoting them:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Wikipedia articles almost always do not copy sufficient material to cause factors 3 or 4 to fail. Images in some cases may fail test 4, but notice that low-res images are often allowed at Commons, because these can be adequate for articles (educational purpose) and the market for an image is far more likely to be for the high-res form. The high-res image may be the protected work "as a whole," or close to it.

To be "illegal," an action, by itself, must violate a law, not merely a civil or commercial right (which may be established by law, but the law will specify what are criminal acts and the penalties therefor, and what merely establish legal rights, perhaps for civil recovery. An act with no penalty is not "illegal." If it harms someone, they may have rights under the law to stop the behavior, and if it causes them harm, they may be able to recover damages, but that does not make the act "illegal." It makes it actionable, something quite different.

We have some lawyers who read Wikipedia Review, and I am not a lawyer, and I can get it wrong. On the other hand, I've written briefs or suggested approaches that were used by lawyers in guiding their own research and action, where I happened to have sufficient knowledge of a narrow area. On copyright, I have only some background and a little reading and some understanding of common law. Copyright law changed over the last decades, and copyright is not common-law, it is a creation of statute, it can be utterly arbitrary, which makes it tougher to understand and predict.

Now, about that Free Republic case. From the Wikipedia article:

In December 1997, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers sent cease-and-desist letters by certified mail to Free Republic and to Robinson demanding that they stop republishing and archiving full-text articles of copyrighted materials. Robinson defiantly refused, saying that before he would agree to excerpt and link—that is, to post only excerpts of articles and use hyperlinks to the original source for the full text—the newspapers would have to "rip the keyboard from his cold dead fingers" (a reference to the famous statement, "I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands").

Ahem. One element in the case against Free Republic is that they did not respond to a cease-and-desist order. Further, note, the full-text articles were published, not merely quotations or excerpts. In addition, the plaintiffs asserted -- and included in the suit -- a business owned by Robinson which advertised on Free Republic, which would benefit from Free Republic traffic. So they were asserting a commercial purpose.

This case makes for bad precedent because it was not adequately defended or appealed. Read the effing article. However, my own opinion is that Free Republic screwed up, royally. Now, how does this relate to Wikipedia or to a nonprofit educational corporation, and that immediately responds to take-down requests?

As to the Daily Kos example asserted, the link is to the site policy, which prohibits the copying of entire articles. It allows "fair use," but provides, as usual, an unclear definition, because "fair use" has no clear definition. That's one of the reasons why, generally, an assertion of fair use is protective if it is not preposterous. The key is how one behaves if the "fair use" defense is challenged, i.e., the copyright owner complains. One can assert that a "fair use" claim was considered reasonable, but once one has refused to take the material down, causing the copyright owner to have to take expensive legal action to protect the owner's rights, the courts will look at the fair use claim with a jaundiced eye.

If the use is actually fair, the copyright owner has no right to order takedown. However, the owner will then have a prima facie case of copyright violation to file, and it could be very expensive to be right.

I'm not aware of any claimed example of "copyvio" as to article text on Wikipedia where the use was not actually "fair." In other words, Wikipedia is triply protected:

*The WMF does not routinely monitor content to insure freedom from copyright violation. This is a community function and is not under the control of the corporation. Nevertheless, the community does look for obvious copyvio, and interprets it very, very conservatively. I'm arguing that the response to Rlevse was a bit hysterical, but ... it may have been fair if Rlevse himself applied strict standards to others.
*The WMF orders takedown upon claim, if I'm correct. They don't argue about it, generally, if there is any apparent basis for the claim. If this got serious, it would go to counsel for review, I'm sure. They do not depend on volunteers for this, I'm sure.
*If nevertheless a case was filed, it would be defensible under fair use as defined above. And this would be so obvious that it's possible the WMF could win attorney's fees due to a frivolous lawsuit. Ask a lawyer about that!

As an additional point, Free Republic was presented with a civil lawsuit. There was no criminal prosecution, as one would presumably have seen if what they did was "illegal."

But some people use "illegal" to mean "could get you sued." It's sloppy. Lots of things can get you sued! The relationship of copyright law to the Free Republic case is that the law established certain rights for the newspapers; and Free Republic injured the newspapers, and managed to trash their own protections by how they conducted themselves.

[GlassBeadGame]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.