The posted Court document says "plaintiff was accused of removing and hiding vast amounts of digital information from computer servers for the Cline Center". So he deleted files? What would be the motivation for this? If he's just using information for some other public data source, I don't see what the problem is, but if he removed the information from another public data source in order to advance his own, that is certainly not OK.
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GDELT suspended
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New reader here, still confused. "Removing" (copying?) data sounds like borderline stuff, probably against some law if not against academic norms.
Hiding is what is weird. He removed data so it became unavailable to others? Couldn't have been anything from Lexis or any of the other proprietary DBs could it, since they have their own well-guarded backups and servers. So what did he take?
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Summary:
The guy left UIUC for GWU and took away the data, deleting it on the UIUC servers. His older partners got mad, brought the issue up, the University administration consulted lawyers, they found a loophole ("he stole the data/university property") and the guy finds himself in court. They are not only suing him but also working really hard to smear his name and reputation, arguing that the data quality was actually questionable. And to clear their names, they sign off the project.
From career ambitions to cat-fights... Episode 1
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Juniper:
I was in the process of downloading the complete dataset when they shut it down. I have everything up to Sep 2006 and about half of everything after that point... Sad story I know.The real question is whether the data will be usable (I'm sure others have downloaded it as well) given the campaign to discredit it. Would anything using GDELT get past reviewers at a top or even subfield outlet?
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I'm still puzzled. Suppose that someone on the project really did illegally delete the original news reports used to create the dataset from the UIUC servers. What does this have to do with the quality of the GDELT data, assuming the original news reports really were genuine? Why would the other people involved in the project, who presumably had nothing to do with the theft, have to dissociate themselves from it?
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Not that tricky. Say you're a department store and you give a designer a contract to create you a clothing line. Then you discover he stole all of his designs from someone else. You're saying the department store shouldn't disassociate themselves from him because the clothes are good and they didn't take part in the theft?
Olivie:
I'm still puzzled. Suppose that someone on the project really did illegally delete the original news reports used to create the dataset from the UIUC servers. What does this have to do with the quality of the GDELT data, assuming the original news reports really were genuine? Why would the other people involved in the project, who presumably had nothing to do with the theft, have to dissociate themselves from it?Olivie:
I'm still puzzled. Suppose that someone on the project really did illegally delete the original news reports used to create the dataset from the UIUC servers. What does this have to do with the quality of the GDELT data, assuming the original news reports really were genuine? Why would the other people involved in the project, who presumably had nothing to do with the theft, have to dissociate themselves from it?Olivie:
I'm still puzzled. Suppose that someone on the project really did illegally delete the original news reports used to create the dataset from the UIUC servers. What does this have to do with the quality of the GDELT data, assuming the original news reports really were genuine? Why would the other people involved in the project, who presumably had nothing to do with the theft, have to dissociate themselves from it? -
GDELT isn't proprietary, so I don't see how it follows that his collaborators were mad that he "took" the data. Besides, neither of his main collaborators is at UIUC; Brandt is at UT Dallas and Schrodt is a freelancer these days.
This is what happens when you try to build a center around temporary employees.
Fabiola:
Summary:
The guy left UIUC for GWU and took away the data, deleting it on the UIUC servers. His older partners got mad, brought the issue up, the University administration consulted lawyers, they found a loophole ("he stole the data/university property") and the guy finds himself in court. They are not only suing him but also working really hard to smear his name and reputation, arguing that the data quality was actually questionable. And to clear their names, they sign off the project.
From career ambitions to cat-fights... Episode 1 -
From the Court filing on page 1 and other filings on the Champaign Clerk's website, the university (as yet) has not brought any charges, civil or criminal, against Leetaru. He filed for an injunction against them to stop the internal inquiry. The court then ruled they did not have jurisdiction over the university's internal procedure.
The GDELT shutdown appears to be in reaction to the outcome of the university's inquiry, not the outcome of a court case.
That is, unless there is any new development in the last few weeks.
Is this mostly his data, or a big collaborative project? And how could he remove it from the servers? The data was available publicly, no? The U are upset Leetaru removed the code from their servers?
Very bizarre and shady on the part of the university.
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