In my search for informative web sites I ran across this site about the state of Paraíba in northeast Brazil. The site is run by Pacific Island Travel.

At first I thought that it was a very informative site. But, as I continued reading it all sounded strangely familiar. I pulled out my 4th edition of the Rough Guide to Brazil and found that the text on the Pacific Island Travel site about Brazil was an exact word-for-word copy of the text in the Rough Guide without any mention that the text came from Rough Guide. Now, back at the university we called that plagiarism.

As a further insult (or just blame ignorance), Pacific Island Travel placed a copyright statement at the bottom of their stolen text. Now, that’s audacious. I just couldn’t trust a travel agent who would blatantly steal text from another source without attribution.

Quoting web sites and other sources on one’s site is quite common. And I also do that very often on this blog, however, always with attibution to the original source. Not only is it the law, it’s common courtesy. I’m a big support of the creative commons and loosening the reins on copyright and intellectual property laws, but I just found this a stretch too much.