Forum:Plagiarism and the Force-Cast

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Many of you may be aware of "the official podcast of TheForce.Net", the Force-Cast. I've been listening to their podcast from the beginning, but have been very behind lately and have just begun to catch up. On their show, they have an "EU Character of the Week" segment in which the co-host, Pete, gives a biography of an EU character. The segment was recently split off into it's own "microcast."

Now, in listening to these segments, I would notice little things that would cause be to believe that they might be using Wookieepedia as part of their research for their bios. But as I became more and more suspicious, I decided to pull up a character's article to compare it with their info. That character was Koffi Arana, and lo and behold, the host was actually reading from our article, paraphrasing some parts while simply reading others verbatim. I also compared another character from that same episode, Bultar Swan, and found pretty much the same thing. I've since reviewed a few others, like Wedge Antilles, A'Sharad Hett, and Oola, and while the paraphrasing is better, there are still enough of the same words to show that it is obviously our work.

I still have a few episodes left before I will be all caught up on their show, but so far, not once have I heard them mention the name "Wookieepedia," despite using our content week after week. I'm not too intimately familiar with GFDL, but I'm pretty sure that the Force-Cast isn't exactly complying with it. Copyrights aside, common courtesy would dictate that credit should be given where it is due.

I know Riff has been made aware of the situation, as have others admins. If anyone would like to check other episodes against our articles, here is the full list. -- Ozzel 08:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)