None of this is an "attack", but a clarification of copyright issues.

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It's not considered unethical to include a archived copy of said resource.


Can you reference your source for such a claim (no pun intended)? As far as I know, it is considered IP theft to copy someone's work without their permission-- in fact, that is the very thing "copyright" protects from. Archival is copying, referencing is not; this is exactly why referencing is the good practice and archival is not.

It is not sufficient to copy someone's work and then reference the author (without permission). That is not ethical. The author in question may not want their work attributed to yours, or may have their own reasons for having their work under their own control. I, for example, may not want my work written in anything published by the OP. That would be my right as author (if I was one).

A better real world example of this is any author who would not want "old versions" of their work floating around, but instead a direct link to the latest version of their work. That way they would avoid disseminating potentially wrong information under their authorship and be able to easily correct any mistakes without having the auxiliary sources (that would not be under their control) updated as well. They maintain this right when they authored the original version.

It is fair to ask permission to include such sources, but it is not fair to take the sources and *then* ask. You'll find that this same ethical issue is touched upon by the mIRC license agreement itself, limiting people from distributing mIRC as part of any package.

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Referencing published material is a different story as it doesn't lead you directly to a source that might become non-existent.


Have you never seen any citation of any online source in any publication? Never read a blog? Have you never seen Wikipedia? Let me introduce to at least one wikipedia entry that is full of such references (full of blog entries, forum posts, [online] news articles and many URLs that may eventually disappear). If anything, your claim is that the author of this help file should beef up the references (make them actual "references") to more accurately point to the author, not that he should copy them outright.

I will also point out that not having "a policy against" copying someones work is not justification for copying it. Copyright is implicit. The policy would have to explicitly allow its use, not simply have no mention of it.