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Article Fails To Credit Instructables

To: Ginny Mies, PC World Staff Editor, and Nick Mediati, PC World Assistant Editor
CC: Kimberly Brinson, PC World Managing Editor, Ed Albro, PC World Editor, and Eric Wilhelm, Instructables CEO

Who is this guy?
I can't find his name on your staff list, so I hope you are the right people to talk to about this.

I was reading the article in the above link and realized that I had just read most of that stuff (almost in that order) already on a web site called Instructables. While I don't care so much about the actual copyrights (Instructables is largely based on "Attribution non-commercial share-alike" legality), I do believe that at least a formal nod is in order. It might look (to those unfamiliar with Instructables) like he did some fancy research to gather those neat tips together, but to me it is practically undeniable that he was surfing Instructables. (I am not exaggerating, I read at least half of those tips on Instructables within the same hour!)

Perhaps the best tip Zack Stern could have given was the only obvious one he left out: Visit Instructables for more of these user-enabling tips!

Sincerely,
Ricky Ratzlaff
Avid Instructables reader

P.S. If you need links to the relevant projects on Instructables, feel free to ask. They're just a search engine away!

Zack1.JPG
9 comments
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Sep 7, 2009. 9:50 AMgmoon says:
Everything referenced in those articles was common knowledge before appearing on Instructables...

You may have seen it here first....but more than half of those "tips" originated within the manufacturing and computer service industries ( Clean this, clean that, remove a mini-CD, reseat components, etc.)
Sep 7, 2009. 3:32 PMTool Using Animal says:
You mean "If something is wet, dry it, if something is loose, push on it" aren't the exclusive province of Instructables? ;-)
Sep 8, 2009. 10:19 AMgmoon says:
...along with IP rights to the sequence (1,2,3,4...)
Sep 7, 2009. 9:27 AMyokozuna says:
Is it possible the "stolen" information was actually released as public domain? That's how I license the vast majority of my ibles, which means no formal nod (while nice) is not required. On that note, I wish more people would do this, as often times crediting someone's work isn't possible and therefore it's rendered unusable (namely on wikipedia, but here as well).
Sep 7, 2009. 3:18 PMLithium Rain says:
Oh, come on now, you are talking about stolen instructables? :P
Sep 7, 2009. 4:02 PMyokozuna says:
Well, they obviously failed step 4, so I felt that something should be said. :)
Sep 7, 2009. 11:18 AMKiteman says:
Although they cover similar topics to projects published here, the images and text are different - does anybody see a publishing date on the PC World articles?

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