I doubt it ends his career. This isn’t enough to get discharged. Probably wouldn’t even keep him from re-enlisting.
I don’t know, the military tends not to have a sense of humor about this kind of stuff.
Given the number of “if I had done what Hillary had done when I had TS clearance” comments in 2k16, I would assume the military would take a very dim view of their mans work once the truth is proven.
Document, document, document. It may even help you organize your thoughts by writing a private memorandum or letter or email or paragraph or whatever about all this mess, starting from the beginning and ending with a “what would make me whole” paragraph.
I’m not sure what they’d hit him with other than an Article 134. There might be a charge that would be more appropriate. Bear Nenno would know.
ETA:
Article 134. General article:
Though not specifically mentioned in this chapter, all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses not capital, of which persons subject to this chapter may be guilty, shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special, or summary court-martial, according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court.
— 10 U.S.C. § 934
Maybe?
"Article 107: False Statements
This short article prohibits making false official statements. It reads, “Any person subject to this chapter who, with intent to deceive, signs any false record, return, regulation, order, or other official document, knowing it to be false, or makes any other false official statement knowing it to be false, shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
It depends on the sort of electronics used, but it sounds about right for off the shelf components for a UAV with a GPS autopilot and video downlink plust the usual radio controll stuff.
I got in touch with the Marine and the Captain in charge of the design challenge and I made it clear that it’s not my wish to see him or his team suffer any hardships over this, but things need to be set right.
I appreciate your initiative but let me ask him about that.
Late for work now so I’ll expand later.
It’s nowhere near as involved as designing a UAV from scratch, but people have used my photos that I assigned a CC-Attribution license to without crediting me, and I generally chalk it up to people not understanding Creative Commons. Again, this is much bigger, a lot more work and he claimed it as his own, but someone getting court-martialed is - to borrow Frank Zappa’s memorable statement to Congress “…the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.”
I thought this was the Dope, not Reddit.
Cool.
I am sure Marine knows the code and knows what the probable consequences are for breaking the code. Hell, in colleges plagiarism, even fairly minor infractions, not trying to pass off a complete work that was done by someone else as your own, is often punished with suspension. Researchers lose their jobs and their funding, and should, for academic dishonesty.
This is an adult real world, not first grade. Stealing intellectual property is not dandruff, it is not fraternity hijinks, it was not a simple ignorance of the process. It is not Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread. It is a very serious and significant offense.
We are not the ones who will decide what the proper punishment for such a serious offense is in this context, but a significant consequence is unquestionably warranted is indeed this was straight up intellectual property theft. And it needs to be made right to the actual creator of the intellectual property.
Alright, I’ve got a few minutes to spare now.
The man responded to my message and said that he had “drastically modified” the design and gave me a link to an entry on the Instructables website where he gives some explanations:
http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printed-Fixed-Wing-Drone/
There, indeed, he wrote the link to the original design in the Thingiverse website (although the link is not clickable). However this has little, if anything to do with the issue of submitting the design to a USMC challenge without, AFAIK, crediting or acknowledging the origin of the design.
He mentions some changes to the design but none of them reflect on the UAV as presented for the challenge (as per the photos I’ve seen and with the exception of the motor position), for example the wing section he shows, with an internal lattice structure, is not the same that can be seen on the assembled model, that one is in fact the original. The thing is, that lattice wing would be way too heavy and the plane wouldn’t fly.
So whatever drastical modifications he made they are not apparent.
For reference, this is a picture of the finished design I uploaded back in June 2014:
https://static.rcgroups.net/forums/attachments/1/7/5/4/0/3/a6819335-244-IMG_7025.JPG
If you look closely at the wings on this and the Instructables version you will see the same design, there is no internal lattice and only shows the three lines of the internal spars present on the original design.
I’ve asked to see the original submission for the design challenge and the files sent to the certification and manufacturing corporation to confirm the extent of similarity between both designs.
Aaaaandddd… back to work now.
Screen shots. Make sure you’re taking screen shots of anything that he can delete (or modify) from his end.
Also, as other’s said, I’d email the Marines. Not sure who, either the link upthread of see what you can do about finding out who he reports to.
I’m tempted to suggest you email who ever gave him the award and/or everyone that wrote an article about this, but then you might have a lot of people making phone calls and wind up with him getting off with a simple pubic apology and a slap on the wrist. If you wanted to go that route, contact your local news outlet’s consumer protection person and see if they can offer up any help. They seem to like doing this kind of stuff.
But still, I think filing a complaint against him is your best course of action. I’d also do it sooner rather than later. Right now he’s still lying about it. Don’t give him time to either formulate an plausible excuse or let his superiors know what’s going on so they might cover for him. Get the ball rolling.
Military justice is harsh these days.
Now I can’t stop giggling.
It’s all well and good to not want to screw the guy but the fact of the matter is that he has an integrity problem and integrity problems lead to dead marines on the battlefield.
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
Still working out how to rectify things, I did screenshot and save several media articles so that’s taken care of.
From what I’ve been told there are one or two articles coming out soon and I’ve been told proper credit will be given, so that’s good.
Well, that would address the Attribution element of your original CC license, but I assume you’ll work out the correct arrangement for the Non-Commercial clause? Because the design won’t be product-ize-able (ick) without some type of manufacturing contract, which smells pretty commercial to me. Of course, it’s your design, so you decide how that will be addressed, but I urge you not to overlook it.
For what it’s worth, he didn’t initially give you credit in that Instructables link, either. Check out the original version on the Wayback Machine from this past July. ETA: There’s no intermediate versions posted between then and now, but I’m sure he edited it after he heard from you.
I am very interested to see the reply from the Chain of Command. I have a pretty good idea how we would handle it here, but although we are very similar in many ways, our countries (and militaries) are still very different.
How do you expect it would go down, up there?
Hmmm… well spotted. :mad: