this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Plagiarism, by definition, is taking the work of someone else without attribution. If you've provided attribution, it cannot ever be plagiarism.

Note that this is not the same as copyright infringement. If I upload the complete 3rd season of Knight Rider to YouTube, that's copyright infringement, no matter what. But if I were to do it and say "created by Glen Larson for NBC" in the description of every video, it would not also be plagiarism.

The above site cannot be plagiarism because every single one points back to a specific XKCD comic or comics that it used as its source. It could be copyright infringement, although I suspect it would probably qualify for a fair use defence due to being parody.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It could be copyright infringement, although I suspect it would probably qualify for a fair use defence due to being parody.

To add: xkcd comics are CC BY-NC 2.5 licensed, adapting the source material is explicitly allowed. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I guess my definitions were a bit loose, but isn't it extremely in poor taste to emulate the exact formatting of the website? An unsuspecting user might genuinely believe they were at the original XKCD site.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The formatting of the website looks completely different to me. The buttons don’t look similar, they’re not in the same place. It has its clear logo which basically tells you it’s not Randall Monroe’s site: "Making XKCD Slightly Worse".

The only thing that’s similar is the art style of the comic itself. Which like…yeah? That’s the point.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 years ago

I think you're being very generous, but we can agree to disagree