Who Owns a Quiz?
First published: Tuesday May 5th, 2020
We recently had an incident where a couple of users on the "other" quiz site were taking many of our new quizzes and posting them as their own. It was very infuriating to the original creators, especially to see the copycats basking in the positive attention their quizzes received. Fortunately, Stewart contacted one of the admins on the other site and they very graciously agreed to remove the stolen quizzes.
Plagiarizing another person's content is never okay. But what about a quiz "idea"? Who owns it? That's a lot trickier question.
One of the problems we've had from time to time is a "gold rush" mentality on the site. Some users see that we are featuring a lot of quizzes along a similar theme, and try to "stake their claim" to obvious extensions of the series. Sometimes, they have even bullied other users who made their own quizzes.
There's a big difference between creating an original idea, and slightly modifying an existing idea. So who really owns a quiz idea? I'd say there are a few factors.
- Who did it first?
- Who did it best?
- How much work did it take to create? Someone who spends hours slaving over an SVG map deserves more credit than someone who puts together a sloppy, unsourced quiz.
- And finally ... is the idea original? If not, no one owns it.
So, in short, we will always try to reward people who come up with great quizzes and original ideas. We will strictly prohibit any blatant plagiarism. But, when it comes to ideas, every great artist builds on the ideas and achievements of others. Sometimes, in deciding which quizzes to feature, we have to make a judgment call. It's not always easy, but we will do our best.
No reason to not use different quiz sites instead of focusing on one
I got the wrong answer
Anyway, I never thought of it as plagiarism. would often link back to the original quiz, or at the very least number mine so that it was clear there were others that came before. But I guess I can see how some would see the line as a little fuzzy.
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https://www.copyrightlaws.com/are-ideas-protected-by-copyright-law/
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https://ocpatentlawyer.com/four-types-intellectual-property-protect-idea/
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So the idea itself can't be protected, but creating an original quiz gives it an automatic copyright security. A judge might then decide at what point of similarity that copyright is violated.
My philosophy is - if you can make it better than what we already have then do it.
Never looked at the other quiz site so no idea, but it's not hard to imagine that plagiarism happens from time to time.
E.G., do you mind when things like Name a Valid Country #2 are made?
There are many quizzes on the system that have had zero takers. This doesnt mean they are bad quizzes but maybe the title puts people off. Someone may make an identical quiz but with a different title, would this be construed as plagiarism when the maker may have searched his own title and not found anything similar?
For example, if some Egyptian guy invented the wheel in 3000 BC, but the Incans had already done it in 3500 BC, it wouldn't really be plagiarism for the Egyptian guy to say he invented the wheel if he couldn't have known the Incans already had.
There are probably multiple historical details wrong with that, but I think it gets the point accross.
This doesn't mean you can use that as an excuse to extend others' series by playing dumb though.
Every time I make a quiz, I always check if someone has done a similar quiz. I feel like my SVG quizzes can only be the unique ones since many ideas have been used