Plagiarism

[raven]

Um. 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.

Comments

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Eep. That's a bit odd.

One thought (which is just me making stuff up, I have no evidence for it) is that it might be some sort of randomly cut and pasted spam account, that's just taken things from Google or something, rather than an actual *person*.

But it seems fairly unlikely, and it's not something I've heard of before.

[gwynnega]

How bizarre! It looks like this person was at a loss for stuff to put on her personals page, so she stole yours?!?!

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

That's fucked. It's like some weird sort of identity theft. I wonder who she hopes to impress by pretending to be you.

A friend of mine had that done to her a few years ago. Do you want me to find out how she dealt with it?

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

That's really bordering on identity theft. How creepy!

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Huh. That really is strange. I don't have any useful advice, but if you ever do want to mount a holy crusade, I'd be happy to ride with you. :D

[me-and.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Email Lycos as well. There should be some way to report someone abusing copyright somewhere...

[amchau.livejournal.com]

That's weird, my dear. Really weird. Especially given that a) the quotes aren't even well-used (if they're intended to make her look clever, they fail), and b) someone must have re-typed them or deliberately taken out at least one apostrophe (I don't have an archived copy of your homepage, and the sentance there now uses the plural, but I'm assuming that you would have used 'it's' correctly, at the very least).

If I were you, I'd try and report it to lycos, but then just forget about it and move on. Whoever she is, she's not worth wasting time and energy on.

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

Huh. Spooky. Looks like you've got a fan! Maybe she's just quoting you, the way you'd put quotes from books or movies on your profile. It's all about how this makes you feel, really though, isn't it?

Keep us informed, anyway! *hugs*

[schlagen.livejournal.com]

WOAH, that first paragraph is pretty much taken from me, if you check my profile. I'm a bit creeped out, to be honest.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Weird. Something similar happened to one of my flist - a random LJ person she had no contact with had lifted her user info verbatim and the words she used for her 'leave a comment'. She tried to ask her about it and was banned from said journal.

She found it strangely flattering and horribly creepy. But not a lot you can really do save irritated e-mails. Hrrm.

[walkertxkitty.livejournal.com]

Use the WayBack Archives to prove that the quotes have been on your site prior to the set-up of this Lycos page. They'll ask for proof that you own the material and proof that it pre-dates the Lycos page. This will give it to you.