UBC President Stephen Toope and his buddies plagiarized report on "internet piracy"

Do you support filesharing? Well I do, because I consider filesharing "fair use".

Not so much support is coming from UBC President Stephen Toope, oh no, he and his buddies actually don't like files sharers. That's why he teamed up with the Conference Board of Canada, cooked up a plagiarized report originating from the IIPA ("the primary movie, music, and software lobby group in the U.S."), charged tax payers $15,000.00, and simply put it out there.

And when they got caught plagiarizing, they put out another post (costs, who knows?) full with more cooked up disinformation. But Micheal Geist, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, struck back.

And so did his readers.

Some comments were made on the sites mentioned, that I'm happy :) to reproduce:

The sweet irony
"How deliciously ironic: they are presenting a plagiarized paper at a conference devoted to Intellectual Property."

Indeed, it's only illegal of course when students do it. When Stephen and his buddies do it, you defend plagiarism to the bitter end.

Sarcasm, I LOVE sarcasm:

Credibility?
"Is it really plagiarism, given that these backgrounders/"studies" exist specifically for the purpose of being lightly rewritten and stuffed into reports? It's intellectually dishonest, morally repugnant, lazy, and self-serving, sure... but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and consider this a collaboration, a partnership, a mutually-beneficial self-serving relationship, rather than plagiarism, which is such an ugly word with that hard "g" and that long "a". Of course, in that case the lobby group's name really should be on the report as co-author, which I daresay would more accurately reflect reality anyway..."

Good point. There's little chance that the US lobby group will be complaining about this type of "file sharing"; that's what the IIPA's report is supposed to be used for. Oh, and what about ripping off governments ($15,000) for "recycling" some repugnantly outdated ideologies; isn't that what governments are for?

Last one:

Who, not how
"Let's not forget the real issue here, Darryl et al. It's not just the fact that they plagiarized another's work (changing someone else's words to sound like your own IS plagiarism). Look at WHO they plagiarized: the IIPA - a giant lobby for American big-business copyright interests.

Even ignoring the fact that the report they plagiarized has been highly discredited, thus destroying the credibility of their own paper, how can they possibly claim to be non-partisan while spouting IIPA garbage in their "own words"?"

Excellent point. Copying IIPA propaganda isn't independent: it's garbage.

You don't know Stephen? Here's an introduction:

UPDATE 1:

This blog post on "the deceitful Conference Board of Canada report on the Digital Economy" (did you note the quotation marks, Mr. Toope?) should not be missed: Good for you, Mark!

UPDATE 2:
Also the (Vancouver) Straight.com got some nasty comments on publishing the findings of the now exposed board of Toope and his buddies.

Read their great "journalism" here, but find some of the enlightening comments below:

Seth: More BS from the neocons that brought us Bush, Harpo, and now for the third time Gordo. This is such plain flaming disinformation that I'm surprised it can be printed without setting the paper on fire.

These dudes come up with their numbers assuming all p2p or torrent is illegal and then figure out the value assuming every downloader would buy the product he "stole".

The piracy watch list is more neocon protectionist nonsense out the US and has been debunked in numerous studies.

And Mark got it right:

This report turns out to be just an unquestioning repetition, and in some cases an outright plagiarism, of material by US lobby groups. That's right - a "non-partisan" group that wants us to take it seriously on intellectual property, plagiarizes the material for its own report

see: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4000/125

And so did jeff: