Chris Anderson Apologizes for Lapse in Documentation

Via Arts, Briefly – NYTimes.com:

Chris Anderson editor in chief of Wired magazine, apologized on Wednesday for copying parts of his forthcoming book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” from Wikipedia without attribution. The passages were discovered by a reviewer for The Virginia Quarterly Review, who was reading an advance galley of the book, which is being published by Hyperion next month. The passages, some copied word for word, include references in a section titled “The First Free Lunch,” as well as segments on usury and the learning curve. “It’s really simple,” Mr. Anderson said in a telephone interview. “Mea culpa.” He said that he originally had put the Wikipedia material in quotations, but that he and his publisher had not been able to agree on a format for citations. When he took the passages out of quotations, he failed to attribute Wikipedia or rewrite the material in his own words. “That’s my screw-up,” he said.