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Author
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Topic: Andy Summers: He's Back!
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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 05-16-2006 10:05 PM
Everyone's favorite ex-Film-Tech member has resurfaced. I found him posting over at the Home Theater Forum. Looks like he's posting under the name "andySu" but it wasn't obvious to me until I started reading some of his trademark rambling, enthusiastic "I want my DVDs to include the original six-track-baby boom-thx-megasound-deep bass-split surround-roadshow mix" nonsense.
So head on over there if you want to be entertained. But...I'd also like to ask for help in helping me determine if Andy is being a clueless twit, or if he's being an unethical prick. Either way, he's definitely on my Shit List right now. The reason: he's been copy-and-pasting sections of articles and things I've written and posting them on the forums without any courtesy links, author citation or anything!!! We're not talking about a single sentence or piece of info; we're talking a 5,000+ word article. And in another post he pasted in a list of several hundred films that I and a couple others had compiled. The real pisser here is that I called him on it and, guess what, the HTF moderators deleted my post thinking I'm the "villain" in this scenario. Unbelievable! Of course, they also deleted Andy's reply post which, unfortunately, I never had a chance to read.
I predict that some of you will think I'm overreacting and feel that this is simply the way the Internet is and that I should get used to it. Whatever. If you ask me, this is the Internet culture at its worst. Why do some people, particularly young people, think information on the Internet is "owned" by everyone and no one? Maybe I'm simply old school about this sort of thing, but sources really ought to be identified. The whole footnote concept was beat into me in school as I'm sure it was with many of you. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, what I'm observing amounts to plagiarism.
At any rate I'm curious to get your thoughts on the matter.
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 05-16-2006 11:11 PM
Sorry to say this, but you may have to get used to it Michael. As a part-time college professor I see this kind of behavior all the time now. Kids today seem to think nothing of copying existing on-line materials and passing them off as their own. Unfortunately, most of the students I deal with do not write very well - professionally written and edited stuff really stands out when compared to the typical lower-division college student writing I have to look at these days. The upside is this makes plagiarism rather easy to detect. Fortunately, college faculty also have access to some pretty powerful tools that help identify where a given document, or even a string of text, may have come from. Plagiarism, especially of on-line material, has become a major hot-button issue with college faculty everywhere these days.
Don't know what to suggest. Internet technology just makes it too easy to do this sort of thing. Maybe someday we'll have widespread digital watermarking of documents. In the mean time, don't publish on-line? Doesn't sound like a very viable option does it?
As far as that git Summers is concerned, there's no legal requirement for him to footnote or attribute anything he writes since he's not writing for money or publishing or academic credit. His actions are still annoying though. If he won't take the polite hint you've given him, you may have to resort to some sort of legal Cease & Desist order. Given that he's in the UK that may not be very simple to carry out. You may also consider going after the Home Theater Forum since they are allowing this activity to happen on their site (in effect they are publishing his writing) even though you've notified them of your concerns. It seems that you will have to take the initiative in any case though. Good luck!
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-17-2006 04:41 PM
quote: Paul Mayer
Sorry to say this, but you may have to get used to it Michael. As a part-time college professor I see this kind of behavior all the time now. Kids today seem to think nothing of copying existing on-line materials and passing them off as their own. Unfortunately, most of the students I deal with do not write very well - professionally written and edited stuff really stands out when compared to the typical lower-division college student writing I have to look at these days. The upside is this makes plagiarism rather easy to detect.
As someone who also teaches undergrads as part of my job, agreed with all of the above. It's sad to say that among students at the lower end of the attainment scale, there are some telltale warning signs of plagiarism in assessed coursework:
- Possessive and plural apostrophes are used correctly;
- Each sentence has a subject and a predicate;
- The absence of rambling sentences which contain incoherently linked subordinate clauses, sometimes without any conjunction;
- A rational argument, coherently set out, backed up with evidence, etc. etc.
Some of the plagiarism from web pages I've seen even includes the cut-and-pasted sections in a different font, character size and/or line spacing from the text written by the student - I'm not joking!
The British higher education system is its own worst enemy, though. It has steadily watered down its approach to plagiarism over the last few years. As recently as the mid-90s, any proven case of plagiarism in any assessed work would get you kicked out of any reputable university or HE college - no ifs or buts. Now there is barely any sanction, and many institutions now apply no meaningful sanction for plagiarised work in years 1 and 2. So of course the less motivated students are trying it on more and more, and the bottom line is that there's nothing much we can do about it.
quote: Paul Mayer
As far as that git Summers is concerned, there's no legal requirement for him to footnote or attribute anything he writes since he's not writing for money or publishing or academic credit. His actions are still annoying though. If he won't take the polite hint you've given him, you may have to resort to some sort of legal Cease & Desist order. Given that he's in the UK that may not be very simple to carry out.
For starters you'd have to convince a judge that it was actually him who had deliberately tried to publish your writing as his own. Given that HTF might not make any meaningful attempt to check the identity of registrants and that Andy Summers could be an alias anyway, that could be more easily said than done. Even if you did manage to track down and identify him and got an injunction, a UK court has no jurisdiction over a website hosted in the US (incidentally, Prince Charles found this out the hard way when an Italian newspaper published rumours that he was bisexual and had shagged his butler - his injunction didn't extend to the paper's Rome-based web server).
quote: Paul Mayer
You may also consider going after the Home Theater Forum since they are allowing this activity to happen on their site (in effect they are publishing his writing) even though you've notified them of your concerns.
That would be where I'd start. Email the owner or moderator with links to the pages containing the ripped off content, links to the original content attributed to you and a request that your content be removed from their site or a credit added. If that doesn't work, then depending on how strongly you feel about the issue and how difficult and/or expensive it would be, I guess that a bolshy lawyer's letter would be the next step.
Incidentally, I once had a photo from my archive's website ripped off and published in a magazine (ironically, the house mag of the Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries - which should know a thing or two about doing rights clearance properly!). I wrote to the editor and promptly got a very apologetic reply, which was also printed in the following issue. My experience is that 9 times out of 10, editors and website owners don't want to be implicated in plagiarism or breaches of copyright, and are only too willing to set the record straight if asked.
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Ben Wales
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 602
From: Southampton. England
Registered: Jul 99
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posted 05-17-2006 05:34 PM
So the Andy Summers is Back out there, How can anyone take him serious after the Bull ![[bs]](graemlins/bs.gif) last year and as we suspect (without any doubt) we can reveal his real Identity as a Ashley Carpenter - see below of when he was famous.
I'M SO SORRY
From the Echo, first published Thursday 5th Aug 2004.
THE most prolific tyre slasher in British criminal history has apologised to his victims in an exclusive interview with the Echo.
Car hater Ashley Carpenter was jailed for 16 months in April for puncturing more than 2,000 tyres in 10 days.
He waged a one-man vendetta on "inconsiderate" motorists by prowling the streets of Bournemouth, Boscombe and Christchurch armed with a sharpened screwdriver.
The cost of replacing the tyres totalled £97,000 but with ancillary costs added the final figure for the damage was estimated to be around £250,000.
After being released from prison four months into his sentence under a curfew, Mr Carpenter has spoken out about what made him crack.
Mr Carpenter, 37, previously of Walpole Road, Boscombe, is now living in the Bournemouth area and hopes to return to his studies in September.
He said: "It was all due to the incompetence of the people on the roads. I was nearly knocked off my bike, abused and swerved towards.
Speaking of the incident that threw him over the edge, Mr Carpenter said: "I was walking home from my friends and I could see the cars driving slowly because of the poor visibility.
"I could hear a car speeding up and ahead I saw a puddle that was about 10ft wide. He went flying past and totally drenched me. That was the last straw."
He added that some months later something just "cracked" inside him.
"That's when it started. I went out and went down the road and deflated the tyres. I was out for a few hours the first night, just walking around. I have never worked out how many tyres it was. I was just so frustrated.
"But when the inconsiderate driving was still happening around me I just thought I might as well go on another night.
"I didn't feel proud about doing it. I just thought: Why not target the whole town to make it look like a ghost town for a whole day? That was my only intention. I didn't want to endanger anyone and thought the tyres would deflate immediately."
Mr Carpenter said he only realised the enormity of what he had done when he read a headline in the Echo detailing the extent of the damage and revealing that many motorists had driven on the motorway before their tyres deflated.
"The whole thing got out of proportion. It was wrong and it was shameful to go out at night and sabotage car tyres. I am so sorry.
"If I won the lottery I would take a big fat cheque down to the police station and say: Here, share it out.
"This has totally screwed my life up. Now all I can do is start afresh."
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