Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in March 2011 from his position as German defence minister following revelations that he had plagiarized much of his 2006 doctoral thesis.

Referred to as the “Teflon Minister” for his ability to escape from controversy unscathed, Guttenberg’s resignation came as the result of ; much of which was driven by an regarding the originality of Guttenberg’s thesis, which had been of summa cum laude by the University of Bayreuth.

The allegations against Guttenberg first following a newspaper article by Andreas Fischer-Lescano, a law professor at the University of Bremen, which questioned the minister’s dissertation. From there, an anonymous online group banded together and began dissecting the material while posting their findings on online forums. As the movement grew, the group utilized an online wiki aptly named the . The wiki was created by a leader in online plagiarism-hunting, a doctoral candidate with a background in online gaming who goes under the pseudonym “.” Along with , an employee of , the two have been instrumental in organizing the online effort to analyze Guttenberg’s dissertation, which also paved the way for the establishment of the wiki. The VroniPlag wiki investigates plagiarism in other dissertations and has already been instrumental in the of German politician .

, the GuttenPlag effort found only approximately 5% of the pages of Guttenberg’s thesis to be free from plagiarism. The wiki implements a to illustrate its findings white pages indicate no plagiarism, black represents plagiarism, and red indicates plagiarism from multiple sources. While intentional plagiarism, Guttenberg soon after and the recently released a following its own investigation into the matter. Eyebrows were also raised by the fact that some of the plagiarism resulted from , which is not permitted for personal use.

Guttenberg, whose full name is Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, is still one of Germany’s most despite the scandal and is to still have a future in politics. Guttenberg’s popularity is bolstered by his aristocratic lineage and he, along with his wife, to represent a form of German royalty.

Guttenberg’s quest to obtain a doctorate was likely influenced by the in Germany. found that 58.5% of chief executives in Germany had a PhD vs only 1.3% in the US even though both countries have similar rates for overall population participation in PhD programs. As such, a PhD in Germany is instead of advancing academic research.

The proliferation of doctorates in Germany among non-academics makes it likely that many others will face scrutiny in light of the Guttenberg scandal, particularly in light of of the VroniPlag wiki. However, the lack of accountability on the part of anonymous online “plagiarism hunters” has made some uncomfortable. Volker Rieble, a plagiarism expert and law professor at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, of anonymously accusing someone of plagiarism since the accused doesn’t know who is attacking his credibility.

The internet has revolutionized and altered many of the traditional approaches to both life and business, online and offline, and plagiarism is no exception. With the success and attention of WikiLeaks, GuttenPlag, and VroniPlag, it appears that the era of anonymous vigilantes is upon us.

The post GuttenPlag: German Politician Brought Down By Anonymous Internet Activists appeared first on IPOsgoode.

The idea for open-source textbooks is not new.  In 2002, the attempted to produce a history textbook using .  It was then estimated that such an initiative could save the State of California .  However, to date, the project has yet to produce a complete book.  In resurrecting the open-source textbook dream, Governor Schwarzenegger specifically asked developers to submit their digital textbooks to the ("CLRN"), which was established by California's Board of Education over 10 years ago to store online educational resources.

In response to the initiative, various nonprofit organizations and leading textbook publisher attempted to release material that would be up to CLRN's content standards.  Surprisingly, the nonprofit organization seemed to fare the best, submitting seven complete books, which all scored particularly well, while when compared to the content standards.  Interestingly, the highest rated books were almost always .

In addition, has expanded on the open-source textbook initiative by targeting college students.  The company that it now has approximately 40,000 college students at 400 colleges who will use their digital textbooks this fall.  Flat World Knowledge co-founder that the shift in demand to cheaper, digitally available textbooks is, in part, the result of college faculty realizing the significant financial burden placed on their students.  He argues that by using the , faculty are unencumbered in the sense that any professor can simply register on Flat World's site and let students know the book is available.

However, others such as , author of , argue that the future in free online digital textbooks lies in the realm of , which would not only bring down the cost of textbooks, but also improve their quality.  In fact, Sun Microsystems founded the nonprofit project, which is built on the platform and designed to allow users to create and change content through a user-friendly interface.  However, Curriki's textbooks were among the lowest scoring of the book submitted to California's board of education.  Curriki spokesperson that the low score was partly due to poor communication between the Board of Education and Curriki.

In any event, it appears that the use of open-source textbooks is slowly becoming a reality.  It remains to be seen whether the digital textbook world will be populated by single authors, or whether the wiki-style textbooks will increase in quality such that they are well suited for academic study.

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