Chamber of Justice Communique #011a

On this day, February 5, 2007 of the Liberated Brotherhood, I the

Justicar of the Brotherhood now announce the decision that this Chamber lays upon Dark Jedi Master Halcyon Rokir.

Upon the conclusion of fair and just proceedings, this Chamber finds you:

On the Charge of Plagiarism: Not Guilty

This Chamber has found you not guilty of the crime you stood accused of, and therefore we lay no punishment upon you. However we are issuing a warning to be more careful with similar situations in the future to avoid any impressioon of impropriety.

Signed and Sealed in Justice,

Dark Side Adept Kir Taldrya Katarn

Justicar and High Protector of the Dark Brotherhood

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Chamber of Justice Communique #011b

Justicar's Opinion - Case #009 Dark Brotherhood vs. Halcyon Rokir

The complaint brought against DJM Halc was that of plagiarism. While he was Consul of Arcona, Halc was said to have taken the Military Ground Forces layout of Clan Tarentum and then used them with very few changes for Clan Arcona. Halc also did admit to looking at the Tarentum site prior to creating his. This was later viewed on the Arcona website, and the complaint was registered under Justicar Firefox. An investigation and discussion were begun, and this information was all handed down to me upon my appointment.

The decision was made to formally charge Halc with Plagiarism and proceed from there. Since the penalty for the charge was less than three-grade demotion or expulsion, the Chamber of Justice convened to weigh the evidence and determine his guilt or innocence. Left Hand of Justice Donitz recused himself during this time due to his personal involvement as author of the Tarentum document. After examining the evidence and discussing it, the Right Hand of Justice and Justicar came to the same conclusion, and the decision was announced. Our focus in the investigation and the examination was a comparison of the two documents.

The main similarities include the fact that the planets are listed from

innermost to outermost, both have numerically correct (1,2,3) unit

designations, they both omit several unit types (command, intelligence, quartermaster, etc), and the general formatting. The order of planets in Brotherhood documents typically go either inner to outer, or outer to inner, giving any posted system a 50/50 chance of matching up with any other. The numerically ordered unit designations would seem normal to anyone not acquainted with real world random designations, which is confirmed by the fact that several other clans use numerically ordered designations as well. The omission of certain unit types cannot be used as fair comparison considering the staggering amount of possible units -

all orders of battle will match up many "missing" unit types. Finally

the use of tabs to indicate inferior position is used throughout both

documents, but this is a very common formating technique.

While a quick glance might make it appear the two are very similar, in reality the similarities have more to do with the way the documents are formatted, than the actual content. For example; Arcona's contains 89 Divisions while Tarentum's boasts 112, Arcona has only five different division types while Tarentum has 10, Arcona is completely devoid of Armor divisions while Tarentum has both heavy and medium armor, Arcona has plain artillery divisions while Tarentum has space, medium, and heavy mobile artillery, finally Arcona uses brigades while Tarentum never does. These are simply a few of the differences in actual content.

Beyond the specific content differences, it is the court's opinion that

the authors of Clan Tarentum's document did not create the Army, Corps, Division, etc. nor Infantry, Artillery, etc. designations and thus cannot lay sole claim to their use. In fact, these are easily researched terms that can be found in many online sources. In addition, the format used by both documents (i.e. Army > Corps > Divisions) is a common standard used by nearly all western armies.

This preponderance of facts led the Chamber to the decision that Dark Jedi Master Halcyon Rokir was not guilty of the charge of plagiarism. We included a warning to be more careful in future endeavors because we believe something as simple as minor formating changes or crediting sources could have avoided this entire process. For the record the offending site has been taken down by Clan Arcona, and we received full

cooperation from all parties.

Signed and Sealed in Justice,

Dark Side Adept Kir Taldrya Katarn

Justicar and High Protector of the Dark Brotherhood