Nothing's more entertaining than a good row between a "big publisher" website and a smaller fansite. Throw accusations of plagiarism into the mix and you've got lightning in a bottle.

This time, however, it seems as if the parties involved handled the situation in a relatively mature and sensible manner. For a media columnist, this kind of sucks the life out of a good dust-up story, but there's still plenty to talk about and hopefully 1UP's experience may keep others in the enthusiast press from falling into the same trap.

After pouring through multiple videogame forums and gauging the general outrage from a large number of readers (and apparently quite a few professional outragists) I've put together a list of the most asked questions and hopefully all the right answers:

What Happened?

First 1up.com printed and then later retracted a Dead or Alive strategy guide with sections and ideas obviously snagged from a fansite called DOA Central. After a vocal outcry from the fansite and videogame blogs such as Joystiq, 1UP.com later republished the strategy guide with proper credit.

What about some examples of the lifts?

Helena
VirtuaPai (DoaCentral)
Can avoids (sic) Most attacks, except low mids, and low attacks.

Richard Li (1UP.com):
Can't avoid low mids and low attacks.

Lei Fang
VirtuaPai (DoaCentral)
Avoids most attacks with proper timing, not good against mid kicks.

Richard Li (1UP.com)
Must have good timing to avoid most attacks, but is horrible against mid kicks.

Repeat this multiple times throughout the strategy guide.

Why did this happen?

This conflict has been brewing for quite some time in the enthusiast press. Cheats are a dramatically different beast than most other videogame content. In fact, cheats are almost like sports scores or statistics in that they are an offshoot or creation pulled from a game and then reported by the media.

Few would dare plagiarize directly from a review or a preview, because those are complete creations of an author, but reprinting a comprehensive list of cheat codes may be a different story entirely. Judging how much (if any) individual creativity that an author added to the list is not an easy task.

It's almost surprising we haven't seen more dust ups like this in the past.

Any other reasons?

Online strategy guide freelancers typically get paid far less than they deserve... almost across the board. It's a thankless job and readers demand that the websites keep the strategies coming. You can hardly blame them from cutting corners.

Note: Media Coverage does not know exactly what Richard Li gets paid as Strategy Editor for 1UP.com, but when he was known as Unemployed Freelancer, he had been offered work writing online strategy guides for numerous different websites and was consistently shocked at the lowball rates compared to much easier reviews, previews and features.

Was this simply a case bad sourcing?

Without a doubt this was a case of bad sourcing. Comparing the source material with the 1UP.com strategy makes it readily apparent where the original text came from.

This is by far the kindest classification used to describe what happened. But why stop there?

Was this plagiarism?

Yeah, it seems likely that this was plagiarism at least to some degree. The writer repeatedly used short character summaries that were clearly similar to those used by DOA Central, often altering only a word or two. Likewise Li essentially duplicated the order of moves and other structural ideas. Unfortunately this looks like a lightly edited cut and paste job.

Webster's defines plagiarism as "to steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one's own [or to] use another's production without crediting the source". That seems to apply here.

The accusations could go even deeper, however.

Was this a copyright violation?

Videogame cheats straddle a narrow line between creative expression which is protected by copyright, and expression which is excluded from copyright protection (including ideas, simple facts, procedures, processes, systems and methods of operation).

A simple listing of cheats probably wouldn't be protected, but if the author adds even 'some minimal level of creativity' to the text or presentation, then it would be protected. Here, DOA Central almost certainly added 'some minimal level of creativity' and its work would be copyrighted as soon as it was written.

With this copyright DOA Central has the right to control all derivative works based on its own original text. It has no right to control what others do with the moves themselves, but it has full right to control its original character descriptions and structural elements.

The unauthorized use by 1up.com could have crossed that line.

If you have a lot of disposable income and want to check this out for sure, just cut and paste some 1UP.com text, change a word or two and then email the URL to Infringementnotice@ziffdavis.com. They'll probably send a pleasant reminder of what is or is not a copyright violation.

Note: Media Coverage legal counsel says that this is probably not a good idea.

What's the difference between plagiarism and a copyright violation?

Lawyers getting involved.

But there wasn't a copyright notice in the forums, right?

Doesn't matter. Those are not required for a work to be copyrighted.

Don't you have to mail a copy of text to yourself or something to establish a copyright?

Nope, but that's kind of a great myth that a lot of writers and artists believe. It sounds like fun, though.

What's the biggest shock coming out of this whole situation?

That no one got caught doing this before. Have you ever written a strategy for an unfamiliar or unreasonably deep game? It can be excruciatingly tedious. Swiping, though wrong, is certainly understandable.

The big publications snag bits of strategy elements, codes and moves from online sites all the time. The small websites can't really point fingers though, they are usually packed with stuff they filched from the big pubs.

Circle of life, I guess.

What's the lesson that many of the big sites miss?

It doesn't hurt to credit others. The cost of a single html link ($.00) could have saved 1UP countless dollars in negative PR.

A lot of cross-media web publishers seem still afraid to link readers outside their borders unless absolutely necessary. That's smart thinking... if you still live in 1998.

What else did we learn?

It doesn't hurt to keep things out in the open. Perhaps the smartest thing that 1UP.com did throughout this entire situation was to address it quickly, find a solution and then fess up as necessary.

By simply making some quick admissions and then fixing the problem, 1UP came off looking humble and not at all like a bully. By keeping the entire process out in the open, the website deflected a lot of criticism even when it admitted its mistakes.

What would have happened if a print pub made the same mistake?

It likely wouldn't have been handled nearly as efficiently. The lead times for print pubs make corrections like this nearly impossible and almost worthless in effect. That's why Media Coverage keeps harping on the value of Ziff's editor blogs. Even though other publishers have support websites, no magazine staff is as connected to its readers as Ziff's pubs.

That connection could have paid off big time in a situation involving a print pub.

What will this mean for 1UP in the long run?

Considering they handled it well, the consequences will likely be minor. The website had long avoided the "evil big guy" rep of IGN and GameSpot, and now they probably will be clumped with the mega-sites in a few gamers' minds, but overall it shouldn't affect them much.

What will this mean for the enthusiast press as a whole?

A lot of people are going to be a lot more careful in the near future. That's perhaps the best thing to come out of this whole mess.