The other day, one of the guys over at the insolent political lampoonery known as Wonkette.com plugged into Google a couple paragraphs of a column by Chuck Norris — yes, that Chuck Norris; he's syndicated, and he's scary conservative — and discovered that his copy was, well, copy-and-pasted. Which wasn't all that surprising given that we live in an age when 7 percent of American students' papers come from Wikipedia — and when, you know, Chuck Norris is a noted political commentator. But surely he wasn't the only text bootlegger in the blogosphere.
Wonkette's "investigation" checks out when run through more advanced verification software like iThenticate, which rose to prominence in 2006 when creator John Berrie's algorithm caught Ann Counter lifting passages for her book Goddess. The iThenticate program cross-checks writing across billions of online documents for sourcing issues as well as straight-up plagiarism, and Berrie gave me unlimited access for a week of follow-up work. The system takes a little getting used to, which is why the world still needs watchdogs and ombudsmen. But really, it's a bloviator's nightmare....
Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/plagiarism-checker-columnists-5714311?src=rss
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