Gerónimo Vargas Aignasse is an Argentine politician, a Front for Victory

Front for Victory

The Front for Victory is a Peronist political party and electoral alliance in Argentina, although it is formally a faction of the Justicialist Party. Both the former President Néstor Kirchner and the current President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner belong to this party, located on the left-wing...

 member of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies

Argentine Chamber of Deputies

The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Argentine National Congress. This Chamber holds exclusive rights to create taxes, to draft troops, and to accuse the President, the ministers and the members of the Supreme Court before the Senate....

 representing Tucumán Province

Tucumán Province

Tucumán is the most densely populated, and the smallest by land area, of the provinces of Argentina. Located in the northwest of the country, the capital is San Miguel de Tucumán, often shortened to Tucumán. Neighboring provinces are, clockwise from the north: Salta, Santiago del Estero and...

. He is the son of disappeared

Forced disappearance

In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...

 Peronist

Peronism

Peronism , or Justicialism , is an Argentine political movement based on the programmes associated with former President Juan Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón...

 physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 and legislator

Argentine National Congress

The Congress of the Argentine Nation is the legislative branch of the government of Argentina. Its composition is bicameral, constituted by a 72-seat Senate and a 257-seat Chamber of Deputies....

 Guillermo Vargas Aignasse

Guillermo Vargas Aignasse

Guillermo Vargas Aignasse was an Argentine Peronist politician, serving as a provincial Senator in Tucumán Province from 1973 until his disappearance in 1976...

.

Wikipedia plagiarism incident

On 6 May 2010, Vargas Aignasse presented a law project to increase sanctions against those who commit plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. But in the project proposal, to define plagiarism, he copied 331 words from the Spanish Wikipedia

Spanish Wikipedia

The Spanish Wikipedia is a Spanish-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, online encyclopedia. It currently has articles. Started in May 2001, it reached 100,000 articles on March 8, 2006. Currently, it is the 6th largest Wikipedia as measured by the number of articles, having surpassed Polish...

 article on the topic (:es:plagio), without any kind of attribution. The copy-pasted text even includes square brackets from the (only partially removed) footnote

Footnote

A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...

s in the Wikipedia article.

It wasn't the first time that Aignasse copied text from Wikipedia into law proposals. In a proposal to prohibit barra brava

Barra Brava

Barra brava is a name for organized supporter groups of football teams in Latin America. This style of supporting is very similar to European ultras. It includes standing throughout the match, singing and other enthusiastic behavior. Some barras bravas have developed reputations for hooliganism...

s from travelling to South Africa for the World Cup

2010 FIFA World Cup

The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010...

, he copied 314 words from the corresponding article.

A week later the Deputy admitted in an interview with Clarín

Clarín (newspaper)

Clarín is the largest newspaper in Argentina, published by the Grupo Clarín media group. It was founded by Roberto Noble on 28 August 1945. It is politically centrist but popularly understood to oppose the Kirchner government...

that he copied the text from Wikipedia, and that he had done it before. Nevertheless, he argued that he had no obligation to cite the source, which could be considered ironic given the fact that the Deputy's law proposal seeks, precisely, to punish those who don't cite sources.

The incident was reported in English by Techdirt

Techdirt

Techdirt is a weblog that reports on technology trends, and related business and economic policy issues, often focusing on copyright and patent reform. The website was started in 1997 by Mike Masnick and it was originally based on the weblog Slash. Techdirt has been named among the favorite blogs...

.

Sources

• Presentó un proyecto contra el plagio, plagiando a Wikipedia" by María Arce, Clarín, 16 May 2010, page 18