Help, I’ve been plagiarized!


I have run the risk of putting code on the internet and lost :( I posted code to validate a South African identity number on the SA Developer website to help a VB.NET developer and somebody took it, converted it to C# and now passes it off as their own. They even added header comments to keep copyright to their company.

Such blatant plagiarism is sad to see especially by a group who claim to be Enterprise Architects, a lofty title to give oneself and to aspire to.

Now I didn’t write the original VB.NET code; a co-worker Charl Nigrini wrote it for a project we’re on and with his permission I posted it to SA Developer to help a fellow member who was having the same problem.

I’m all for sharing code and using each other’s components, I even take demos and presentations available on the internet for SA Developer meetings. But please give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the original content creators; otherwise developers will have the same problem architects have where they won’t be able to share intellectual property and we all become closeted.

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September 1st, 2006
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Jonathan Bailey
Posted on:
1 September 2006 at 3:40 pm

First off, I’m very sorry to hear about what happened to you. I hope that I am able to help in some way.

Code is protected by copyright law, but that only protects the code itself, not the concepts that surround it. Admittedly, I’m not much of a programmer, but generally converting one snippet of code into another language isn’t outright copyright infringement. It might be considered a derivative work, but generally ideas are protected by patents, which must be applied for and purchased.

What happened is definitely an ethical violation but, without looking at a comparison, it’s hard for me to say if there was a legal one. As far as what to do goes, if there is a legal violation and the company uses a Web host located in the EU or U.S., there are ways to get the works removed. I can help you with that if you shoot me an email (I highly recommend using the contact form on my site).

All in all though, it might be something they can get away with, it will all depend on how much code is involved, how many other ways there are to program this and how similar the two instances are.

I hope that helps!

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Andre Odendaal
Posted on:
1 September 2006 at 3:50 pm

Thank you for the kind offer but I’m going to let this one go; it’s just not that important. There are concepts and variations of how to implement ID validation exist all over the internet, I’m just upset at the blatant copy of my little piece of work and not even a “please and thank you”