Talk:Daniele Luttazzi

I'm updating the info concerning plagiarism, which is currently gaining a lot of attention by the media in Italy, thus providing a lot of official references. Please note that the Italian page for Daniele Luttazzi is currently in a bad non-NPOV state, and in particular there is a lot of controversy about the plagiarism accuse. Most of the debate is undermined by the fact that primary sources used to be blogs and (supposedly) copyright-violating videos. I am adding

• (one) Officially verifiable sources, which are backed up by a newspaper being legally responsible for them, and using the content as the base of articles in the printed version.
• the content hosted there is (almost obviously) not in violation of any copyright law: it goes under fair use and it is publicly available from the newspaper web site. Previous debate about the copyright violation was propelled by public video hosting services like youtube promptly removing the content on request by Luttazzi's own agency, without verifying the claim. Any discussion on the topic is clearly void now that the very same material has been shown to be legally distributable.

Sorry for the long discussion, but I don't want any of the Italian wiki page NPOV-related flames to get there, so it's better to be clear in the beginning. Changes: Re-added Carlin, and added Rock to the list of (supposedly) plagiarized actors, as the movie I add shows them. Added the legally available source for the video comparing Luttazzi with Carlin and Rocks. Caveats: English is not my first language, someone please check my grammar and style :-) --Max-CCC (talk) 19:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Additional note: the second reference I put in is from a blog archive; although the article is a reproduction from the one originally published on Il Foglio, I'm not certain that this is acceptable. In case it is not, you should not remove both citations, only the second one (and possibly the linked text ofc). Reason I added the second reference as IMHO it needs to be explained that many people refuse(d) to even consider the plagiarism accuse, in the aftermath of the Editto Bulgaro and even today. Besides, the situation is complex, and I believe it is relevant that Luttazzi was censored for political reasons, and not because he was believed to plagiarize at that time. I'm adding a few wiki cross references to reduce redundancy of the article. --Max-CCC (talk) 20:15, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Made other improvements reducing duplication between intro and biography. Now I believe the issues related with censorship and plagiarism are both more balanced, but I think that for an NPOV article the biography is too short and doesn't list all it's required (while the italian page goes way too far in the opposite direction). Help wanted I do not know how to collapse two identical references in the article (3 and 8 are the same). --Max-CCC (talk) 20:53, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to erase the sentence regarding "il Foglio" in the "plagirism" section. "il Foglio" never found more than a handful of jokes being copied from more famous authors and only claimed that many of Luttazzi's shows were heavily inspired by some americans comedian (i.e. David Letterman). The research which brought to us more than 500 jokes which were "borrowed" (plagiarised / cited, depending on how people see it) was not made by "il Foglio", thus this newspaper is not that relevant in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.160.21.102 (talk) 21:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not agree with the reason for removing the "Il Foglio" comment. It is ok to remove it if not properly sourced, but there is good reason to mention this as a precedent to the current plagiarism discussion. As it is relevant for the bio that Luttazzi was the subject of a political banning, it is also relevant that the political nature of the first attack impaired any discussion on the plagiarism issue for years. (This is obvious to any one reading the flames on fan's blogs, although they are not a valid source for wikipedia.) The matter IS relevant IMHO, I am re-adding to the extent I can find valid sources. --Max-CCC (talk) 00:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Current formulation is basically well documented and reports only well-known fact and opinion of respected commenters from a national newspaper. I still believe we miss information concerning the other works from Luttazzi mentioned by Wu Ming, but I'd rather not copy from the Italian wikipedia page now, as I have not time to check the information. --Max-CCC (talk) 01:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I will try to comment my last edit on the "Foglio" part (Plagiarism section). I managed to get some articles regarding the alleged plagiarism back in the days: I didn't find enough to link that with the recent controversy: basically, if we were to sum up in a sentence, the Foglio journalists were saying "you're are heavily inspired by a popular USA format and some jokes are ripped of from the material of famous stand up comedians". This is more an artistic judgement ("don't act bold, there's nothing new under the sun").

The new accusation is much more serious, and can be summed up in "you have plagiarised hundreds of jokes from other comedian, without giving them any credit).

I also find meaningless to quote bloggers or to summarize their thoughts. How many bloggers? Why? The only people who should be quoted here are, in my opinion, Writers' guilds, other supposedly plagiarised comedians (and not quoting them from a facebook page, like I did before), very important comments found in newspapers.

I don't want to sound harsh, but if we don't stick to that we risk following the same path as the .it wiki (--> NPOV, gigantic page).

One more thing, I'm pretty new to wiki and my wikinetiquette might be a bit rusty. I don't want to start an edit war, if you have more thoughts on the question feel free to share. As I previously said, if I'm behaving like a grumpy old man it's only because I see what the .it bio page on Luttazzi has become. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.96.140.13 (talk) 12:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I might still be wrong, but I have been through a lot of wikipedia policy pages before adding the material. I expressed the same worry about the status of the Italian page (although recently some editors improved its NPOV-eness), and this is why I am not simply translating it, all facts should be verified and NPOV - checked. But this is not a reason to refuse all opinions on the plagiarism that are not from Luttazzi and the plagiarized artists. I this case we would have no plagiarism, as the accuses did not come from the plagiarized. We are missing one important point: in any other country such a situation would have lasted for a few months, while In Italy this has lasted under the ashes for years, until it got attention in the media.

There is an obvious connection (which needs to be documented properly, of course) between the political censorship suffered by Luttazzi, years without appearing on television, and the strange reactions of his (former) fans to the plagiarism accuses. This is obvious to people living in Italy, and now it is also starting to be documented in the media. Limiting the scope of commenters to the Writer's guilds is nonsense, this is no tribunal and we are documenting facts, reactions of Lutazzi and of the public opinion.

On the contrary, Wu Ming's opinion reported by a national newspaper is a valid source, as well as a balanced and deep analysis of the facts, as they are authors of international level (writers, although not of satire) and performed an extensive search on the subject (which wikipedia is not allowed to do) before writing their article; they are quoting and discussing fan reactions, you just need to read the reference to check it out. Please note that, at least concerning my contribute, you removed references to online archives of printed newspapers. The one I tagged as uncertain, it was because the archive was from a blog (that is, I am sufficiently certain that the content is from a newspaper, but I warned everyone that the authoritative source needed to be found and retrieved.) --Max-CCC (talk) 15:51, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Saw the edit: almost perfect I say. Now it's clear and pretty encyclopedic. I'll try to add some more references tonight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.96.140.13 (talk) 16:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; i fear that also dagospia may not be a valid reference. (I hope it is at least in this case, I personally hope to soon read a full article from Molinari on a newspaper or magazine). In my experience dagospia posts revert from public to private after some time (happened with posts related to Raiperunanotte). Any similar experience or knowledge available?

We still need the original source, or someone who has the material newspaper, for the "Il Foglio" accusation from 2007, I don't like having second-hand archives (this one was put in question on the italian wiki). --Max-CCC (talk) 16:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, especially for Dagospia. Il Foglio has a nice "search" function on its site if I recall correctly, I'll look into that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.163.16.222 (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Readded the "plagiarism" tag (a bunch of other comedians who have been accused of doing so have the same tag, like Carlos Mencia). I hope to have more sources on the thoughts of other UK/US comedians soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.163.28.69 (talk) 17:12, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Il Foglio

I’m pretty sure that “Il Foglio” does not “belong” to Berlusconi. It’s a limited liability company composed by several members/partners. Now I ignore if Berlusconi has the majority and couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet, so if someone has sources to say that then fine, just saying that I’m not sure that it “belongs to berlusconi” is an accurate description.189.140.64.231 (talk) 16:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Unknown source of Berlusconi's money

It should be specified who considers the origin of Mr.Berlusconi's money to be unknown or mysterious. AFAIK no one proved that Berlusconi's money is unknown or of illegal origin