Plagiarism By The History Channel?

Subscribers to H-Pol yesterday received an interesting message that, if true, will bring to light yet another possible scandal related to the writing of history. Apparently the HistoryChannel.com has been taking pubished encyclopedia entries and reprinting them on the website without attribution, and possibly without permission.

Details are still fuzzy, but according to Cindy Williams (affiliation unclear) several of her articles for an (unnamed) encyclopedia have appeared verbatim, with no attribution. Williams' main question was about copyright, but clearly there was a subtext of alarm and concern about work that she had done.

Rebunk will investigate . . .

Update: It is possible that Ms. Williams overstates or misunderstands the situation. Apparently Funk & Wagnalls, the Encyclopedia for which she contributed, gave the History Channel permission to publish the pieces. Obviously there is no copyright issue, and presumably in the author agreement, the encyclopedia took over all copyright control. If there is a lesson to be learned here (beyond the fact that we might all be too quick these days to believe the hype about plagiarism) it is that authors need to be aware that if they do not control the copyright to their work, those who do will be able to reprint or republish your work. If you are a junior scholar, and you publish an encyclopedia article, don't be surprised if it turns up somewhere you did not intend.