Mp3 plagiarism How to tell?

December 21, 2006 1:27 AM

Given an mp3 file by student. He says he wrote the music. I doubt it. Can I look inside and find if the details have been edited?

I have been given an mp3 file by one of my students. He says he composed the piece and has had an orchestra record it. I doubt the story. If I right-click properties it all seems to be OK. Is there a way to dig into the mp3 and find when it was really created?

posted by priorpark17 to computers & internet (25 comments total)

By "digging into the mp3"? No, not really -- the tags in the file are just a bunch of bits, and could have been set to anything, but the student or anyone else.

Imagine that the student had given you a cassette tape instead. Even if the label had his name on it in his own handwriting, you understand that the music could have come from anywhere, right?
posted by xil at 1:53 AM on December 21, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Argh, "by" not "but".
posted by xil at 1:53 AM on December 21, 2006

Probably going to be more practical to either have someone who might recognize it/be able to consider the production value listen to it.

Otherwise just ask questions about the orchestra/recording/costs/other practical details and see if you detect any BS.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 2:07 AM on December 21, 2006

Wow, an orchestra? If he/she's not being truthful, that's a ballsy lie.

Why not try a music recognition service? I know Cingular now offers it through cell phones (you just dial some number and play the music, and it texts/emails you with the results).

Other than that, xil's right -- you can check the tags and see if there's anything blatently obvious, but other than that, the file itself will be of little help.
posted by spiderskull at 2:09 AM on December 21, 2006

You might want to see if Musicbrainz can identify it (the MB clients generally have a function that "fingerprints" the music, in an attempt to identify it, no matter what it's named/tagged). I'd be pretty ballsy for a student to turn in something that had enough distribution to end up in that database, but you never know.

When you say "dig into" the MP3 file, you might mean, "examine the id3 tags closely". A good id3 editor can show you any tags that the student failed to delete. You could also run the unix command "strings" (also available on OSX and windows) which will pull out a more raw form of the data.

Truthfully, though, I think I'd just confront the student, either directly or obliquely -- ask for the sheet music given to the orchestra, or ask to talk to one of the orchestra members, or ask for an outtake... something like that. See if he stammers and backpedals, or what.
posted by toxic at 2:17 AM on December 21, 2006

Forgot to add: My email is in my profile, if you want to send it to me, I'll feed it through musicbrainz and run strings on it. Not sure if that's helpful to you or not.
posted by toxic at 2:20 AM on December 21, 2006

Some mp3 software only views/edits ID3v2 tags if both ID3v1 and v2 tags are present. It's possible that the "original" file had data in the ID3v1 tags that wouldn't have been changed and would still be viewable in any decent ID3 editor.
posted by markr at 2:28 AM on December 21, 2006

Ask to see the score. Ask how many violas he used, etc.

or is communicating with the student not ok?
posted by distrakted at 3:47 AM on December 21, 2006

Yeah...I'd ask something score-related. Even something as simple as *how* they scored it could do the trick. Did they use a computer? What software? If they're committed enough to have an answer ready for that, it might be tough. I'd suggest passing it around to some colleagues with music background and see if they smell a turd.

If they're ballsy enough to claim someone else's orchestral piece, it should be relatively easy to suss this out. There will be a hole somewhere if they're lying. That's an elaborate thing to fake.

Strictly going on the mp3 file, I can't add anything to everyone else's advice. It is just a recording.
posted by braintoast at 5:25 AM on December 21, 2006

Nailed. All the ID tags I could find had been changed...but when i played it in Windows media player and clicked "Album Info" up popped what CD it is from. He had a full story for how the recording was financed and everything. Thanks for all the help. Pity, I am now going to have to do something about this. Maybe I am going to leave it until after Christmas.
posted by priorpark17 at 5:33 AM on December 21, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Out of curiousity, could you name the track/artist?
posted by dobbs at 6:08 AM on December 21, 2006

I think you should creatively bust him. Call him in to your office and say, "After listening to your piece, it occured to me that the composition is very similar in its structural tonality with another of my favorite pieces. Here listen to this and see if you can hear the similarities..." Then just make him set there for 10 agonizing minutes and just squirm.. See if he confesses before you bust him.

By the way, I just made up "structural tonality" I have no clue if that is even a musical term.
posted by jlowen at 6:40 AM on December 21, 2006

All the ID tags I could find had been changed...but when i played it in Windows media player and clicked "Album Info" up popped what CD it is from.

It's not clear from what you say whether you actually listened to the other piece. I would make sure you do that, because otherwise you're putting a lot of trust in WMP.
posted by smackfu at 6:49 AM on December 21, 2006

Does your institution have an ombud? If so, turn the dirty work over to her. There might be some satisfaction in busting the little punk, but there's also the chance that you screw it up and the egg winds up on your face. Also, any student who can afford an orchestra and recording might have a daddy warbucks who will rip you a new one at even the hint that his sweet-wee-widdle-baby did anything wrong.

Use the bureaucracy. It's not everyday you can leverage the Man in your behalf.
posted by terceiro at 7:23 AM on December 21, 2006

Unless you can verify the tags with a second piece of software then I wouldnt do anything yet. I dont know where WMP isgetting this information. Check the file type with winamp or with itunes. Or check it out with an id3 tag editor. Download "strings" for you computer and run it against the file.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:16 AM on December 21, 2006

This will take two calls.
One, to the student. "What orchestra?"
Two, to the orchestra.
The student should have the orchestra's contact info. And if he hired an orchestra to play a composition that he didn't write and turned that in? Well, I say you give him the grade based on his huge balls, but that's me.
posted by klangklangston at 8:25 AM on December 21, 2006

Thanks dirty ape, "strings" found all the dirt; the original composer and the record company. Have heard both versions and they the same. Have had a second person listen and they agree. I taking the advice of terceiro and kicking this upstairs.
Nice try.

Kid 0:1 Metafiler
posted by priorpark17 at 8:46 AM on December 21, 2006

Damn.

I was going to vote for "Wow; that's nice work. I'd love to see the conductors' score; how long did it take you to assemble it?"
posted by baylink at 10:37 AM on December 21, 2006

This sounds like a time to send it on. Not to the ombud, but to the honor board of your institution. It was an assignment that they plagiarized, intentionally. Which is too bad for the student, but academic honesty is a big deal too.
posted by lilithim at 10:40 AM on December 21, 2006

This happens at Berklee. The usual solution is basically what you did: Ask iTunes to "get" the track's name from its database. I can tell you that, as an avid collector of some pretty obscure music, I'm constantly amazed by the scope of that database; I'll plug in brand-new CDs from CDBaby, or imported from indie labels in Europe, and iTunes recognizes them.

In a couple stories I heard, the professor didn't need the database. One professor told me about a student who "submitted" a track from a contemporary gospel CD — which just happened to be a CD that particular professor owned and loved. Unfortunately, the kid's "punishment" was to resubmit the project. I've never heard of anyone being expelled for plagiarism. But maybe your school is different.
posted by cribcage at 10:47 AM on December 21, 2006

Embarrassing admission time: when I was in 8th grade I turned in a few pages from the Harvard Lampoon book Bored Of The Rings for a creative writing assignment. I figured there was no way she was familiar with that book, and it was an easy way out of something I didn't want to do.

A few days later, my teacher started class by saying she'd been going over our assignments and wanted to read one that she thought was just fantastic. As she started to enthusiastically read what I submitted, I started to shrink into my seat. The fact that everybody liked it just made it worse. I have no idea whether she knew it was not my work, just suspected, or actually thought I wrote it, but the round of applause at the end ensured I'd never try anything so stupid again.

It might be fun to treat him like an 8th grader before you hang him out to dry...
posted by InfidelZombie at 12:08 PM on December 21, 2006

Be sure to tell us any follow up!
posted by PandemicSoul at 1:31 PM on December 21, 2006

(sidebar ...)

Yeah, an ombud would be the wrong office to utilize. Ombuds are more for grievances and alternative dispute resolution. It's a fluid office, so your school's position might differ from the standard, but the typical ombud's office doesn't do investigation or party-specific advocacy (she wouldn't work for or against the student or for or against you). They're "designated neutrals."
posted by Alt F4 at 2:24 PM on December 21, 2006

I was once in a creative writing workshop where a fellow student turned in a Hemingway short story as his own ("A clean, well-lighted place"). 15 years later I'm still shaking my head in amazement at how little thought he put into his plagarism. I mean, Hemingway!? Why not just turn in Genesis or the Declaration of Independence or something obscure like that.
posted by sic at 4:08 PM on December 21, 2006

A girl in my fifth-grade class turned in a Shel Silverstein poem as her own. The one with a snail and the poem kind of curls around the snail's shell. Yes, she even copied the snail.

I didn't rat her out but I hope the teacher knew.
posted by Justinian at 5:56 PM on December 21, 2006