Angela Benedetti

Thanks for expressing interest in my story, “Learning to Love Yourself,” as well as a number of my colleague Mike Shade’s stories. It’s great to know there are people out there who want to read my stuff.

But seriously, dude, it costs $1.29. You can buy a copy right here for, like, a quarter of what a cup of coffee costs these days.

Now I’ll admit that with the many, many stories which were passed around on that particular Demonoid thread, you ripped off saved quite a lot more money than that. I’m afraid I can’t find it in my heart to admire your frugality, however, since it comes at the expense of my own earnings and those of other writers I know.

If you’re really that strapped for cash, there are plenty of legitimately free stories around on the internet. There’s some great stuff in fanfic fandom (look for rec lists) plus a lot of published writers have free stories on their web sites. Archives like Nifty are free and specialize in gay erotica. Oh, and there are also places called libraries where you can borrow books for free — I’ll bet there’s one near you.

But you know, the pirated e-book thing? Please knock it the fuck off. Thank you.

Angie

[EDIT: Comments closed because of spam.]

As you might have heard, it seems the doctoral dissertation of William Meehan, who was granted his Doctor of Education degree by the University of Alabama in 1999, and is currently president of Jacksonville State University, contains a significant amount of plagiarized material. Check out the graphic in Michael Leddy’s blog — the verbage copied word-for-word from the 1997 dissertation of Carl Boening, is hilighted in yellow.

Leddy’s been reporting on this for a while — also see his posts on 23 April and 9 May.

Backing up a bit, this all started when Prof. David Whetstone sued Meehan over some plant specimens which Meehan claimed belonged to the university and Whetstone claimed belonged to him. Whetstone pointed out the plagiarism in Meehan’s dissertation as a way of establishing “a pattern of behavior of him stealing others’ work.” Most people commenting on the situation seem to be more concerned with the plagiarism than the plants, which is probably understandable to everyone but Prof. Whetstone. I think we’re still grateful to him for bringing this up, though.

According to the Tuscaloosa News story linked just above, two UA administrators are fighting subpoenas to testify regarding the plagiarism of Meehan’s dissertation, on the grounds that “it will subject them to annoyance, embarrassment and undue burden.” Umm, right. The great burden of being called to testify in a matter as trivial as a plagiarized doctoral dissertation (especially when the accused is, on the strength of that dissertation, currently the president of a university) is just too onerous. Clearly someone should have sympathy for these poor people. [/sarcasm]

Sandy Gordon, a lawyer for the University of Alabama, claims that the two administrators shouldn’t be called to testify because the plagiarism issue has nothing at all to do with the dispute over the plant specimens, and besides there’s this other guy you should talk to about it ’cause he’s on our side.

That being Mike Miller, who chaired Meehan’s dissertation committee. And, interestingly enough, also chaired Boening’s dissertation committee. That makes him a not-disinterested participant, since if it’s officially decided that Meehan did plagiarize Boening’s dissertation, the obvious question will be, why didn’t Miller spot it? Or Harold Bishop, who was also on both committees?

Interestingly enough:

Miller, a former UA professor, said in an interview last week he was never contacted by anyone at the university to discuss Meehan’s dissertation, contradicting Meehan’s statement that Miller was called upon by UA to investigate the accusation two years ago.

Miller told The Tuscaloosa News that he doesn’t believe Meehan plagiarized.

So either Meehan or Miller is lying about whether anyone talked to Miller about this two years ago. And Miller’s statement to the press doesn’t carry much weight either; if he wasn’t called on to investigate the plagiarism accusation two years ago, then can we really believe he remembers enough details about two dissertations he read ten and twelve years ago to be able to say with any assurance that there was no plagiarism? If he had investigated the matter two years ago then I’d be slightly more likely to believe at least that he believes there was no wrongdoing (although I still wouldn’t take his word for it without a lot more supporting evidence than his bare assertion) but he says he did no investigation and was never asked to. One might suspect that his assertion that there was no plagiarism rests more on the fact that his own academic reputation is on the line here, than on the likelihood of him remembering specifics of two papers he read a decade or more ago.

Patty Hobbs, PR Director at Jacksonville State (where Meehan is president) said in a press release [link to PDF] on 23 April that:

Litigation is currently pending in a lawsuit filed by a JSU professor against the University claiming the professor owns plant specimens located in the JSU herbarium. Unrelated to this case, attorneys for the professor have leveled unfounded plagiarism claims against the university president. These claims have been investigated not only by the university, but by third parties and the university is completely satisfied that there is no substance to the allegations. President Meehan has been clear from the beginning that he used Mr. Boening’s dissertation as a spring board for his own, and Meehan’s dissertation duly credits his predecessor’s work. It appears these false charges have been made in an unfair attempt to pressure the university to pay money to resolve a questionable claim regarding ownership of the plant specimens. The two matters are totally unrelated.

So the two matters are completely unrelated, have nothing to do with one another, and besides he didn’t do anything wrong.

Except the statement that “third parties” have satisfied the university that Meehan is in the clear is questionable. Leddy references an AP article in which

Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today examined the dissertations and “concluded that ‘extensive portions’ of Meehan’s dissertation were plagiarism of Boening’s work.” In other words, the third-party investigation supports, not discredits, the allegation of plagiarism.

One has to wonder just which third parties gave Meehan’s dissertation a thumbs-up? It would’ve been nice if the press release had been more specific on just who was supporting Meehan.

The main argument in favor of Meehan seems to be that he acknowledged Boening. In his abstract, he says: [link to PDF]

Using a case study and content analysis design, this study replicated at a regional comprehensive institution a study of sabbatical leave patterns that had first been conducted at The University of Alabama in 1996 by Carl Boening.

That’s fine so far as it goes, but that’s an acknowledgement that the original idea for the study, and perhaps the method, came from Boening. This very general acknowledgement doesn’t give Meehan wholesale leave to lift extensive phrasing and passages from Boening’s dissertation without further, line-level citation. Boening’s dissertation is included in Meehan’s References list, and Boening’s name is mentioned ten times in the body of the document. That’s not nearly enough to account for all the lifted passages.

The fact that Meehan duplicated Boening’s study, but at a different institution, isn’t the problem. An editor’s note in the Tuscaloosa News describes the situation, then says:

So far, so good. I can’t see anything wrong with extending one line of research in new directions. In fact, that’s what the scientific method is all about. We do similar things with news stories. If one newspaper looks at an issue in their hometown, we may look at the same issue here.

This is common practice in both academia and journalism; whether or not a thesis applies in a larger context or a different setting is a completely legitimate question for research. The problem isn’t with what Meehan chose to study, or even how he conducted his research, but rather with the extensive verbage lifted directly from someone else’s paper.

What’s really outrageous about this isn’t that, unless there’s a fairly huge chunk of mitigating data hiding somewhere, an extremely prominent (and well paid) academic plagiarized large chunks of his dissertation, although that’s bad enough. No, what’s really outrageous is that neither the institution which granted his doctorate nor the one which currently employs him seem at all interested in pursuing the matter.

DRMT, commenting on BoingBoing’s post on the subject, [Comment #108] says:

When a university president is found to have plagiarized, it’s the alumni and donors who need to raise their voices and force the board of regents to fire him or her. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the only way these things get done. Plagiarism is an increasing problem in our classes and students need to understand how serious it is.

I’d say that the alumni and donors of both Jacksonville State University and the University of Alabama need to call for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of the matter, followed by a firing if the results go against Meehan rather than dismissal without some sort of due process, but otherwise I agree. It’s hard enough to convince other people — writers, readers, students, teachers — that plagiarism is a serious violation and not to be tolerated when someone as prominent as a university president seems to be getting away with it, and profiting handsomely from his stealing and cheating, even after the matter has been made so public. This is outrageous, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to want to be associated with any institution which condones or overlooks such behavior, much less support them with funding.

[ETA: comments closed because of spam.]

Angie

…we have racism, ablism, classism, plus a Hey, let’s all laugh at the fat people! Wow. Check out the WalMart Bingo Card. [eyeroll]

Oh, and down in the comments there’s someone taking a swipe at those outrageous women who actually breastfeed in public! [exaggerated look of horror] Wow, wouldn’t the world be better without them? To say nothing of the people with eyepatches, and the white women with multi-racial kids? [I have to wonder whether women of other races with multi-racial kids are somehow less offensive to whoever made up this bingo card, or whether this person just thinks all brown people look alike and therefore has never noticed a woman of color with multi-racial kids. It's racist and offensive either way.]

I guess if nothing else, this is a great example to show that people who are bigoted against one group of people tend to be wide-spectrum, equal-opportunity jerks. Because clearly seeing someone who’s missing a limb shopping in the same store as you is just as offensive and objectionable as seeing that someone has left frozen foods thawing on a random shelf somewhere.

Good grief. :/

Angie

Amazon is trying to sidestep the publicity nightmare by claiming that this is all a glitch and that they’re working on fixing it. Umm, sure.

Jane at Dear Author looked up the metadata for a number of books, both ranked and de-ranked, and it seems the stripping of sales ranks might’ve been done in accordance with the metadata, looking for “Gay & Lesbian” or “Erotica” in the metadata to choose what to strip. Books like A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality weren’t stripped of their ranking because, despite being clearly about homosexuality, they don’t have “Gay & Lesbian” in any of their metadata.

That explains how this could have been done automatically. There apparently is a consistent keyword-type search which could’ve been used to strip rankings on books which all had metadata features in common by someone typing in a command. I still don’t buy the “glitch” story, though, because that doesn’t explain why writers like Mark Probst were told straight out that the de-ranking was done by Amazon, per their policy of removing “Adult” material from searches and listings. Why would anyone have said, “Yes, we do this, it’s policy” if it was actually a glitch? Sorry, Amazon — I’m still not buying it.

Note also that someone came up with the tag Amazonfail and people have been applying it on Amazon to books which had their ranking stripped. This isn’t something that’s going to force Amazon to do the right thing; they can and likely will delete the tag as soon as they notice it. I’m willing to spend some time tagging and confirming tags just to be annoying, though; have fun if you have some free time.

I did notice that some of the books which have been used as counter-examples (”Why were those books de-ranked and not these?!”) have been included in the Amazonfail tagging. I didn’t confirm those; I still think that all the books should have their rankings and be included in searches and listings. No matter what I personally think of some other books (the historical manual on dogfighting, for example) I oppose all censorship and suppression of books and won’t even suggest suppressing books I disapprove of, any more than I approve of anyone else censoring books I like. That’s just me, though.

Angie

What? You say you’re an adult and don’t need a nanny when you’re shopping for books? Too bad. Someone thinks you do, and whoever that someone is obviously has a lot of pull at Amazon, and has a particular axe to grind when it comes to GLBT books (that’s books, not just fiction) and also some het erotica.

We’ve been tracking this issue for a few days now and have been trying to be fair, wondering about mistakes and glitches and computer hiccups. Erastes’s Transgressions and Alex Beecroft’s False Colors have been doing very well on Amazon for the last ten days or so, had been ranking in the top five for GLBT pretty consistently and often went one-two. False Colors had been selling well enough that it was close to hitting the bestseller list in “Romance” rather than just “GLBT Romance,” which would’ve been a wonderful coup for Alex as well as her publisher.

Apparently someone objected to that, though, so the sales ranking data was stripped from both books, as well as quite a few others. Without that ranking data, a book won’t show up on any bestseller list. God forbid that NICE people who are just searching for a good, wholesome romance have their eyes burned out by being forced to view the cover and title of False Colors. (Which, BTW, is a historical whose cover art has two guys fully clothed in historic Naval uniforms on it, nothing nasty or smutty or naked, unlike so many of the het romance covers which are apparently considered clean and pure and worthy of being displayed in the more general searches.)

If you’re not sure what sales-ranking data has to do with searches or anything else, this is briefly how it works: When you do a search on, say, ROMANCE on Amazon, it gives you a list of all products which fit that term, listed in order of popularity, determined by how many copies have sold. Those sold copies contribute to the item’s sales ranking; an item which ranks 3,820 on the ROMANCE bestseller list isn’t as popular as one which ranks 249. Everyone wants a rank of 1. If a product doesn’t have a sales ranking attached to it, it’ll never appear anywhere on those search lists, since they’re ordered by sales ranking and the list won’t find a product without one.

The books are still listed on Amazon, are still available for purchase, and can still be found if you go specifically to the Books section (as opposed to using the search box on the front page) and enter the author’s name or the title, but a customer who’s just browsing a section rather than looking for a specific book or author will never see it. Stripping the sales ranking from a book doesn’t make it completely unavailable, but it does cut down significantly on the number of people who’ll see it, which cuts into the author’s sales.

Mark Probst, whose book The Filly had its ranking stripped (despite being a historical YA with gay characters but no sexual content) wrote to Amazon to ask what was up. This is what they said:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

So no, it’s not any kind of glitch or error or oversight. The Filly and Transgressions and False Colors, along with Heather has Two Mommies and John Barrowman’s autobiography and Stephen Fry’s autobiography and Nathaniel Frank’s Unfriendly Fire (which is a non-fiction examination of military policy) and hundreds of other books, some with sexual content and many without, have been deliberately targetted as “adult” material. Umm, right. Heather has Two Mommies is a children’s book, and only the most narrow-minded of homophobic bigots would consider it to be “adult” material.

Oh, and in case you thought Amazon was stripping books with any mention of homosexuality, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is still ranked and shows up on search lists. So no, this isn’t a case of some clumsy tech setting up too wide a target in the database and stripping the ranking from all books which mention GLBT topics or keywords; this is a very specific and targetted attack on books with friendly or positive treatments of GLBT subjects, plus whatever het erotica the censors think is ewwy enough to be swept up in the same net.

Unless of course it impacts the sales and promotion of Amazon’s own Kindle and Kindle-proprietary e-books. Alex noted yesterday that Kindle versions of False Colors and Transgressions had become available as Kindle e-books, complete with rankings which will let the Kindle versions show up in searches and bestseller lists, but the paperback editions still have no sales rankings. I guess Amazon’s concern for the children and the more narrow-minded of their customers only extends so far as other publishers’ books; for their own pet project, they’re willing to ignore morals and decency and do whatever it takes to make money. Wow, at least they’re consistent. [/sarcasm]

This is being discussed all over so most of you have probably heard about it already in one form or another. Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are two of the larger sites discussing the story. It’s worth reading the comments; there are many good comments and more details about what is and isn’t being rank-stripped, as well as trackbacks to other discussions. Also note how many people are saying they’re ready to stop shopping at Amazon over this, and how many writers have already stripped the Amazon buy-links from their blogs and web sites.

Smart Bitches also set up a Google Bomb to redefine “Amazon Rank” thusly:

amazon rank
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): amazon ranked

Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.”

If you post about this issue, and I encourage you to do so, please include a link to that definition page. It’s already the first entry shown whenever someone Googles “Amazon rank,” but more is always better and will make it harder for Amazon or any publicity-doctor firm they hire to bury it.

The LA Times Blog has posted on the subject. At the time their article was written, Amazon had “not responded to the LA Times request for clarification.” I’m sure that’s because of the holiday, and the fact that no one’s in the office or at all contactable, and not because Amazon’s upper management is locked in a frantic meeting trying to figure out how the hell they’re going to pull themselves out of this publicity disaster they’ve created.

Some people around the blogosphere are questioning why GLBT and erotica books are being censored while most het erotica and sexy romance books are not. Also mentioned are other possibly objectionable books which are still sales-ranked on Amazon. To me, the clear discrimination makes this even more of an outrage, yes, but saying, “Why strip this and not that?!” makes it sound like stripping the sales rankings off all these other books would make this okay.

It won’t.

This isn’t quite censorship but it’s close, and as such it’s a despicable thing no matter what is or isn’t included. I don’t want more het-oriented books stripped of their rankings to make this somehow more “fair.” I want the sales rankings restored to all the books, so that I and every other customer can search for the kinds of books we want and know that we’ll be shown all the relevant books, not just the ones that aren’t too gay, or the ones that haven’t been stripped yet, or the ones available in Kindle editions. I’m an adult, I don’t need a nanny to “protect” me from making bad book choices, and I’m grossly offended that the views of a few narrow-minded people who apparently can’t bear to even see the title and cover of a book they don’t care to read are being given preference over the views of the rational and mature majority.

If Amazon doesn’t fix this soon, I’ll definitely be shopping elsewhere from now on.

Angie