Argentinian Politician’s Anti-Plagiarism Bill Plagarizes Wikipedia

Yo, dawg, we heard you like plagiarism.  Well, this anti-plagiarism bill plagiarizes three paragraphs from the Wikipedia article on plagiarism, so you can…

Eh, you know the rest.

Argentinian statesman Gerónimo Vargas Aignasse suggested a change to article 172 of the of the Criminal Code, (Google Translate here), which would make plagiarism an offense punishable by jail time of three to eight years, and in his five paragraph summary description of the bill, copy-pasted three paragraphs from the Spanish language Wikipedia.  In fact, only the first and last sentences are original.

He even seems to have left in some of Wikipedia’s hyperlinking punctuation by mistake.

Techdirt notes that Aignasse may not even really be copying from the right Wikipedia article: “it looks like he’s confusing plagiarism with copyright infringement — noting in the explanation of the bill that “plagiarism” is harming the recording industry.”

The Spanish Wikipedia entry on plagiarism can be found here, compare the first three paragraphs with the bill here.

(via /.)

Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com

Author

Close

Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

twitter