Author and Wired editor, Chris Anderson got himself in a bit a pinch when the Virginia Quarterly Review analysed his new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for review and found that Anderson had lifted a number of passages from uncredited sources, amongst them Wikipedia.

When asked for comment on the situation, Anderson replied that the outcome was unintentional. While both he and his publisher, Hyperion, say that sources were originally credited in footnotes, it seems that when deciding against using that structure in the book and changing it to an in-line crediting lay-out, neither Anderson nor his publishers found a way to satisfy Wikipedia’s crediting policy and unintentionally omitted the references altogether.

When reading Creative Commons’s explanation of Wikipedia’s Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 licence, it states that it will allow others to “remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms”. The terms Wikipedia has set for the use of its article are attribution, sharing alike, if need be indication that the original work has been modified and release under identical license of the original work accompanied by a notice of such license.

This last one of course could find Anderson and his publishers in a quandary. If part of the book is adapted from material under a CC-BY-SA license, the parts or whole that contain that passage will also need to be published under the same license. If I understand the licensing agreement correctly, Anderson would be permitted to commercialise his writing, however, he would still have to publish his work under a Share-Alike license. And I doubt that he would want that. The publishers have indicated that the book will be re-edited to include all appropriate attributions, but even so, Anderson should have paraphrased the original sources or in lieu of that used quotes and block quotes. The issue whether or not Anderson committed plagiarism is difficult, but at least he practices what he preaches; Free is Free.