Feb. 19th, 2006
Plagiarism
Feb. 19th, 2006 11:00 pmUm. It seems I have a mystery to solve, and I'd appreciate some help from them that know about this sort of thing. It's rather weird, but here goes. I got an anonymous comment on this post (if it's one of my friends who forgot to log in, please do tell me, but somehow I don't think it is), telling me, basically, that someone out there is plagiarising me, here.
The link goes to some kind of singles thing on Lycos (anyone know more about it?) and shows a specific user profile. Anonymous commenter is quite right: a large proportion of what's on that page has been copied verbatim from me. In detail:
At the top of the page, "Glamorous indie Rock n Roll"[1] has been used as a title. I don't have any rights to that, it's the name of a Killers song, but it was the title of my journal for a very long time (where it now says "philosophy supernatural nude") and later things considered, I'm inclined to suspect.
The first paragraph is all blurb, nothing to do with me, but then there's this:
"Life, like fanfiction, appears to be a mixture of comedy and angst. The stuff here reflects life inasmuch as its also a mixture of comedy and angst; other than that, its all made up. Honestly."[1]
That is the text off the main page of my website, Sleeping With Ghosts, and has been since the site went live in June 2004. It is not a quote or paraphrase of anything, it is my own writing.
Below that, there is this:
"Dear Every Contemporary-Or-Otherwise Writer On Rousseau Ever,
Je ne parle pas francais parce que je suis bete et je voudrais aller a la maison maintenant s'il vous plait.
In other words, it may be a crime against humanity to study eminent political theorists in translation, and I get the distortion in meaning thing, truly I do, but please: I DON'T SPEAK FRENCH.
Dear self,
Regardless of the above, it is not big and it is not clever to type up sections of Rousseau and feed him through Babelfish. Kindly cease and desist."
That is from a very recent post of mine, the series of open letters here, and it is not attributed in any way.
Now I know that this is teh intwerweb and I do keep a public journal, and so I shouldn't really get all knickers-in-twist over this, but I think I'm justified in being a little peeved. It is still plagiarism, after all. Plus, something does smell a little fishy about this. Anonymous commenter, whoever you are, I'd really appreciate it if you gave me some means of getting in contact with you.
Anyone else: any thoughts? I'm not going to mount a holy crusade or anything; but I might take a certain pleasure in sending a displeased email in the direction of this mysterious person, if I could only find some contact info for them.
Edited to add: I just realised I was being idiotic in posting this publically. Hence, friends-only at least for the time being. Back to public.
[1] The grammatical errors in these are not copied verbatim from me.
The link goes to some kind of singles thing on Lycos (anyone know more about it?) and shows a specific user profile. Anonymous commenter is quite right: a large proportion of what's on that page has been copied verbatim from me. In detail:
At the top of the page, "Glamorous indie Rock n Roll"[1] has been used as a title. I don't have any rights to that, it's the name of a Killers song, but it was the title of my journal for a very long time (where it now says "philosophy supernatural nude") and later things considered, I'm inclined to suspect.
The first paragraph is all blurb, nothing to do with me, but then there's this:
"Life, like fanfiction, appears to be a mixture of comedy and angst. The stuff here reflects life inasmuch as its also a mixture of comedy and angst; other than that, its all made up. Honestly."[1]
That is the text off the main page of my website, Sleeping With Ghosts, and has been since the site went live in June 2004. It is not a quote or paraphrase of anything, it is my own writing.
Below that, there is this:
"Dear Every Contemporary-Or-Otherwise Writer On Rousseau Ever,
Je ne parle pas francais parce que je suis bete et je voudrais aller a la maison maintenant s'il vous plait.
In other words, it may be a crime against humanity to study eminent political theorists in translation, and I get the distortion in meaning thing, truly I do, but please: I DON'T SPEAK FRENCH.
Dear self,
Regardless of the above, it is not big and it is not clever to type up sections of Rousseau and feed him through Babelfish. Kindly cease and desist."
That is from a very recent post of mine, the series of open letters here, and it is not attributed in any way.
Now I know that this is teh intwerweb and I do keep a public journal, and so I shouldn't really get all knickers-in-twist over this, but I think I'm justified in being a little peeved. It is still plagiarism, after all. Plus, something does smell a little fishy about this. Anonymous commenter, whoever you are, I'd really appreciate it if you gave me some means of getting in contact with you.
Anyone else: any thoughts? I'm not going to mount a holy crusade or anything; but I might take a certain pleasure in sending a displeased email in the direction of this mysterious person, if I could only find some contact info for them.
[1] The grammatical errors in these are not copied verbatim from me.