I once had a plagiarist steal my work---and it sucked big time.

[trumad]

I've been writing a sports blog for the last couple of years and I love it. I love it because I love to write. I love everything that goes into writing a great piece. The research, the thought process that goes into setting up the piece, and then of course how I feel after I'm finished writing the piece.

A great piece is like your baby. It's your art... It's yours.

One day, a couple of months back, I was scanning other sports forums and I came across the name of a guy who regularly participates in my comment section. His name is Tommy.

I clicked on Tommy's post at this forum and began to read what he posted. Well--he posted a piece that I had written just a couple of days earlier. No problem-- I thought at the end he would acknowledge that it was my piece. Nope--- no acknowledgment.

But here's what he did that had me steaming. He added several sentences to my piece and acted as if he wrote the piece.

I was pissed. I then went on my blog and posted exactly what he did. Needless to say, my readers were just as pissed. I think there's two kinds of plagirisim... One way is to cut and paste whole paragraphs of other writers work and add it to your piece... The other way is to steal the whole piece from another writer and then add your words to that piece. I think the second way is the most egregious.

Tommy--the plagiarist emailed me and said he meant no harm and that he only added the words to make the story better. If I was able to reach through the internet super highway with my hands, I would have strangled the dude right there on the spot.

I was surprised at how pissed off I was. It wasn't like the guy shot me.... But in a weird way I felt that I was violated. I know that sounds goofy, but that's how I felt. To me it was like some dude broke into my house and ripped me off---even worse.

It may be hard to explain to non-writers. BUT plagiarism is just plain fucked up.

This is why the Post needs to fire Ben Domenech. He has broken one of the most important codes known to writers throughout the word. Plagiarism.

[InternalDialogue]

1. I once had a plagiarist steal my work, too -- and it sucked big time.

I've been writing a sports blog for the last couple of years and I love it. I love it because I love to write. I love everything that goes into writing a great piece. The research, the thought process that goes into setting up the piece, and then of course how I feel after I'm finished writing the piece.

A great piece is like your baby. It's your art... It's yours.

---

Well, that's my opinion, at least.
;-)

[trumad]

6. LOL

Damn you...

[MadMaddie]

2. So true.....

But remember that in the environment we are living in this country the guy won't be punished it's okay to lie....and not be punished...

I am sorry this has happened to you....I am glad you called him out on the issue!!

[Dora]

3. It sucks at all levels, all writing.

I have a friend from graduate school whose story was plagiarized by an undergraduate student at Princeton. He used it as part of his senior thesis, and also entered the same story in a competition and won $1000. The situation actually created a minor buzz in some online writing circles. Ultimately, the student fled to Korea and lost both his undergraduate degrees.

Yeah, it sucks for the writer, but it sucks for the plagiarist even more. These dumbass idiots never learn that the truth will come out, and actions have consequences.

[Brazenly Liberal]

4. It's happened to me, too

Several times, I've been casually looking around a web site I've never seen before only to find an article I had written for another web site. It irks me every time.

But, for some reason, the one that bothered me the most wasn't a serious article. It was a silly limerick I wrote about 8 years ago. I've seen that damned limerick on at least a dozen websites, always attributed to the same guy. I sent him a blistering email and he had it corrected on a few sites, but it's still out there with his name on it.

[InternalDialogue]

5. I've not been published very often,

so I don't have the visceral connection to the crime that you do, but as a writer and most importantly a lover of writing, I share your disgust. It's fraud, it's misrepresentation, it's cheating, it's taking a shortcut, it's dishonest -- it's actually par for the course for snot-nosed posers like Domenech.

I can't wait to see how quickly the Post drops him. They weakly defended him when his first sins turned up, but now it's clear he's a rescidivist -- and he thieved right from the Post itself.

[displacedtexan]

7. And then there's academic brain-picking...

In my senior Educational Foundations seminar (the one seminar class per week
that student teachers had to take at TCU), there were 30 of us. We met to
discuss our student teaching experiences with a prof.
Well, we had to write a major paper, "Innovations in the field of ___ During The
Last Decade," which was the only real basis for the grade.

30 students turned in papers on just about every high school level class taught.

The prof finished his doctoral dissertation the following semester:

"Innovations In Secondary Classroom Teaching During The Last decade"

Not one of us was cited.

GGGRRR

We all complained, but the guy skated.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

8. Try being plagiarized by Michael Moore...

Four pages of "Stupid White Men" were taken directly and in total from political activist work I had done on GWB's first six months in office. I should have sued his ass when I found out, but I was too damn nice and opted not to. I did get an acknowledgment in the paperback edition, but still...

I think the saddest thing for me was -- being a huge Michael Moore fan since "Roger and Me" -- I was completely disillusioned with him. It was so incredibly stupid of Moore to leave himself open to attack and criticism by using unsourced work he lifted from an email. Stupid white men, indeed. :eyes:

Yes, plagiarists suck. Hard. And need to go. (Sorry, Mike.)

[liberal N proud]

9. Never copy with out credit.

There is no reason not to recognize the individual who inspired your writing.
I don't have the most original thoughts when it comes to political writings, but if I am inspired by someone else, sure as hell am going to acknowledge them. Not only is it illegal to plagiarize but it is hurtful

[elehhhhna]

10. I had a coworker one level above me (banking, amillion years ago )

tell me he needed to proof the spreadsheets I was tasked with designing (Lotus 123 lol). It was MONTHS before I found out all he did was change my name to HIS on the floppydisk.

Sort of plagiarism imo. Pissed me off royally, and I busted him for it.

[KharmaTrain]

11. Plagarism Helped Me Start My Own Business

I was a "copywriter"...writing commercials for a radio station. One day I eyed one of the sales people walking over to the files of my past-written copy, pulling out a script and then I watched her take it to the newly installed fax machine (this was 1989). I asked her what she was doing and she told me the client had asked her to send the script to another radio station (not an uncommon practice...but one I objected to cause I didn't like my work making money for a competitor). Ironically, the station she was sending it to was one I had previously worked at writing commercials. Investigating further, I found the station owner had never found anyone who stuck in my job after I left and not only had they used this script but had recycled dozens of my old scripts...some were 8 years old. I figured if they couldn't find someone to do this job, I'll bet other stations have the same problem.

Soon...I called that station and several others...bought a fax machine and started up my own business...making lemonaide from lemons.

Also, I've written web articles that have been lifted...and, yes, it sucks seeing someone else claiming you're original thoughts or research as theirs...but I've found that in my circle of people that matter (and it gets smaller all the time) know I'm the original author and that I can always go back and create more...that loser will have to find another leech to suck off of...and eventually will be outted.

Cheers...

[RagingInMiami]

14. So what do you do?

You're a freelance copywriter?

[KharmaTrain]

15. Blissfully Retired...

...and grateful I was able to get out while I could.

Cheers...

[NanceGreggs]

12. My first DU article, "Interim Report to Parents" ...

... (A satire written as a letter to G. Bush Sr. and Barbara Bush from Georgie's school principal) was reprinted on many, many websites after premiering here.

I Googled it one night, to see where it had wound up, and found it on an open message board, where someone had posted it as their own work. I was REALLY pissed, until I read the comments posted after it. Immediately the poster was flamed; people recognized the piece and pointed out that was written by 'Nancy Greggs of Democratic Underground'.

But my favourite comment by a replying poster was:

"If there's one thing I HATE more than a bleeding-heart Liberal, it's someone who PLAGIARIZES a bleeding-heart Liberal!"

[trumad]

13. LOL

I just can't imagine trying to pass anothers writers work off as my own. You have to be pretty slimy to do it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. I have seen that!

If it is the piece I am thinking of, it has been posted on teaching discussion borads and went around educator email groups for years.

Hey that is a great piece! Congrats on all the promotion - but sorry you didn't get any credit.

[SmokingJacket]

16. It's absurd that they didn't fire him instantly. nt

[Plaid Adder]

17. Hell is not hot enough for plagiarists.

It's happened to me too, a number of times. Some of these people are real prizes. There was Corey, the guy who posted the entire Straight Person's Guide to Gay Etiquette on his website and pretended he'd written it. After I emailed him about it and he did nothing, some of my friends took up the cause, and it transpired that virtually his entire website had been plagiarized from a variety of different sources. After he was finally forced to take down the stuff he'd plagiarized from me, he posted a snotty little piece about how this proves that "lesbians and gay men can't get along." I said, no, Corey, it proves that writers and plagiarists can't get along.

Corey wasn't making any money off the stuff he stole. He was just one of those people who wanted to have a snazzy website that made him seem cool, but didn't know anything about web design and also apparently couldn't come up with his own content. More infuriating was the case of a guy I'll call DE, who operated a blog at someplace called blogit.com where you make a certain (very small) amount of money every time someone clicks on your site. One of DE's fellow blogit.commers, who had once been a newspaper editor, discovered that all his content was stolen from elsewhere, including--and this is the funny part--both George Will _and_ yours truly. She dropped a dime on him to me and to Ernest Partridge and Bernard Weiner at the Crisis Papers, from whom he had also plagiarized. Further investigation revealed that he was regularly pillaging DU content and sticking his by-line on it. Through blogit.com he made about 50 bucks off it, too, which was particularly offensive since all of the people he was stealing from were writing for free.

I'll tell you what, though--once he was caught, DE gave good entertainment value. Since all of us knew each other, we were ccing each other on our correspondence with him, and it was amusing to watch him lie, get caught out, try again with a less outrageous lie, get caught out, and finally crumple. He promised to reimburse DU and the Crisis Papers for all the money he made off their stuff, though I'm not sure the check ever came through. Two interesting things about DE: 1) He seemed to have no sense of responsibility, until he started pretending to be crushed with remorse in order to make us take pity on him and not prosecute him. 2) He was a terrible writer. In terms of grammar and spelling, his emails were almost Hate Mailbag quality.

Most plagiarists, once caught, will claim that they didn't realize that what they were doing was plagiarism. In my experience, most of them are lying through their teeth. Unfortunately, plagiarism is something that many American high school students learn to do in order to pass courses that require writing, and once they realize they can get away with it they just keep on going. DE was at least stealing from people who have no name recognition in the mainstream and who were probably unknown to most of his blogit.com readership (except for George Will). How Ben Domenech thought he was going to get away with plagiarizing from a popular conservative humorist already well known to the much larger audience who would be reading his blog is another question--though of course accountability is fast becoming part of the America of the past.

It is probably hard for non-writers to understand what it feels like to have your material stolen. As I told DE in one of my emails, stealing someone else's material and selling it as your own is no different, ethically speaking, from breaking into someone's house and stealing their TV and then fencing it. But it feels, as trumad says, like a violation, because the connection between you and your writing is more intimate than the connection between you and your possessions. At any rate, I'm glad Domenech is going down.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Lisa]

20. for professionals, even "ambrosing" (citing without credit for quotes)

... is as much as admitting that you can't do your job. It means waving a big sign that says you can't come up with original ideas, and the words to express them. For true journalists, academics, and anybody else who claims to be a serious writer, it isn't just a technicality -- it's a matter of identity. ("Loss of pride" and "self-esteem" don't really describe how horrible a plagiarism accusation can be ... a family friend, Ken Adachi, committed suicide over this kind of situation.)

As you say, PA -- most of the time, plagiarists know they are doing something wrong (even if they might have forgotten, or not have been informed of, the accepted procedures for crediting ideas or quotes). Otherwise, they wouldn't bother making up elaborate excuses: "they want us to write so many papers and it's just not fair"; "I didn't have enough time to check all these references"; "It's okay as long as you've already cited them somewhere else, isn't it?".

Several years ago, I was in Oakland working on a book with a friend. We opened up the morning paper before getting to work. My friend looked at William F. Buckley's column, and said: "Hang on a sec". He reached for the Oxford English dictionary, looked up the word Buckley was discussing ... and there was the column, in point form. All the quotes, in order, with a few extra words added, and no mention of the OED anywhere. We stared at each other -- we're both thinking, why are we busting our butts to proofread and fact-check our book, when someone else can just lift stuff from other sources because he's famous? (Sure, even for Buckley's readers, I bet not many of them have a multi-volume edition of the OED in their living rooms, but he was definitely taking a risk.)

My friend folded up the paper, put it aside, and we started on the next chapter. That was our answer -- we do it this way for us, for the book, and never mind Buckley.



p.s. "Ambrosing" is a term which I'm fairly certain I made up -- named after a certain history writer tried to wriggle out of plagiarism accusations by claiming he had acknowledged his sources, but without noting that he had copied entire paragraphs verbatim. Anyway, I googled it just now to check (something which people who really are uncertain about whether they're plagiarizing can do, thanks to Internet technology) -- and it hasn't made it into the popular lexicon, so I can be pretty sure that I didn't inadvertently swipe it from anyone else.

[trumad]

28. Yeah my plagiarist acted like he didn't even know that the word meant.

But what bugged me is when he said he added words to my piece to make it better. I almost blew a gasket on that one. I said dude, you want a better piece, then write a better piece using your own words. Of course he couldn't do that because he can't write 2 sentences without sounding like an idiot.

Like I said up above--- I was amazed at how I felt when I caught the guy. It was as if I got kicked in the teeth. It was a weird feeling.

[Plaid Adder]

30. "Making it better." That's rich.

I have a story much like that.

A long time ago I did a piece for DU called "Getting Serious" about how we had to wrap our minds around what this stolen election thing really meant. I got an email from this chick who asked me for my permission to rewrite it and publish it as her article.

I said she could either post it as it was with my name on it or she could leave it alone. She then explained how it was really too long and how her article would have all the same ideas in it but be much better. I told her that if she wanted to write her own article she would need to come up with her own ideas, because otherwise it would be plagiarism. That was sort of our stopping point.

Then I marveled to myself at how anyone could have the boldfaced arrogance to email someone and say, "Your piece sucks, but can I steal it anyway?"

Yeesh,

The Plaid Adder

[trumad]

31. ROTF

Bottom line--- some people are just plain stupid.

[catrose]

33. The weirdest one for me

was when I wrote a piece for a recovery group's soon-to-be-published book. They turned me down. Years later, they contacted me about editing another book for them. I went to their website for the first time, and found the piece I'd written. Okay, so it was all anonymous, so TECHNICALLY it wasn't plagiarism, but why reject someone's work and then put it on your website? I tried to be big about it and get over it. Still trying.

[knitter4democracy]

18. I had it happen to me as a teacher.

I taught a knitting class a few years back out of my home because I'd had students signed up when the yarn shop owner pulled out. I'd done all the prep, and they wanted to still take it, so I had the class.

One of the students took copious notes, called several times in between classes (often very long phone calls involving long, repeated explanations), questioned me on absolutely everything, tried to get me to rewrite another teacher's pattern on something not at all related to the class, and constantly berated me in class when she disagreed with something. Needless to say, I was quite glad when that class ended.

Next thing I knew, I got a mailer from the shop that they were offering my class--and I wasn't teaching it. I called up, and it was that annoying student. I called her up, and she told me that since the pattern was free from copyright, she assumed it was okay for her to teach it at the same shop I'd developed it for. I asked her what she was teaching, and it was word for word everything I had covered in the same order with the same emphasis. I was livid and told her it was plagiarism, that it wouldn't be allowed in any educational establishment, and that I wanted credit on her materials.

She's been banned from my classes. I found out that she did it to another teacher, tweaking her original pattern and then teaching it just as she'd been taught. It was the material she'd wanted me to help her on. :eyes: Oh, and I have heard that she's an awful teacher, so there's that, too. *sigh*

[Lisa]

21. one feels sorry for her students, but still ...

There's more to teaching than just copying other people's stuff. Being able to come up with new ideas (and being ready to answer in-depth questions in case students ask) aren't things which can be transfered on notepaper or electronic documents -- if she doesn't know the patterns the way you do, it probably shows.

I've noticed that very few of the people I teach with will use someone else's notes, without extensive modification and revision, even if they are given with permission. They just don't feel comfortable lecturing from someone else's material. My prof, in particular, will credit everyone who gave him ideas or information. (I learned this after several students I'd never taught came up and started asking me questions ... he'd been telling his entire class that "Lisa gave me this article" or "Lisa drew this graph back in 2000", and so they felt they already knew me.) And last month, I offered to lend some notes to another instructor who had come back from pregnancy leave, and she said that she'd prefer it if I came in and did a guest lecture, because she thought it would be more enjoyable for the students -- but I know that it's not due to my ability but her scruples (she's won a bunch of teaching awards).

[knitter4democracy]

25. Can I ask you about that?

We had a prof at my college who plagiarized his hiring lecture. I was there when he gave it, and he never credited the prof who originally gave it. Two years later, I was in the dept. office and heard that same lecture coming out of his office in a different voice, so I went in and asked him about it. He told me that he'd taped his prof and then memorized the lecture, since it was so good. That's the one he gave (and it was a brilliant one) to get hired. I reported it to the dept. head after I graduated that spring, and it finally made sense why he'd not lived up to my expectations.

Anyway . . . just after I caught him in that, he asked me to give a guest lecture (as an undergrad) for his novel class, as I'd studied the piece more than he had. Well, first he asked for my notes from when I'd studied it in Russia and had been to a lecture by a Tolstoy scholar. I told him that I didn't have time to translate my notes (I take weird notes), and that's when he asked me to lecture it for him. I agreed, figuring he'd probably tape it, but I put it all together, making sure to credit absolutely everyone I could think of, even writing their names on the board. One of the students complained, though, and he got written up in his permanent file for having an undergrad teach his class.

Did I do the wrong thing? I know he's used that lecture since, but I made sure to write the names down when I saw him frantically copying everything down in the corner. Did I do wrong to give him someone else's work, knowing he'd probably copy it? I still feel weird about it.

[Lisa]

32. busted!

Wow, that's pretty blatant. I wonder if the guy's prof knows that his ex-student is getting credit for his work? (Funny to think that the stereotype is of the greedy supervisor swiping the hardworking grad student's stuff!)

I hope that the lecture wasn't the main reason why they hired the guy. If so, they've got to be suffering buyer's remorse right now.

Re: your guest lecture, if you didn't copy the Russian prof's material wholesale and also put in some of your own comments, I think you're in the clear, even if you had some suspicions about your guy's copycatting. If he turns on you at some date, and accuses you of being the plagiarist (weirder things have happened), you at least have the rest of your work on that novel to show. (You know the old saying -- steal from one person and it's plagiarism, but steal from several and it's research -- and if you cap it off with what you think of the situation, that's analysis!)

It would have been tempting to slip some obvious errors into the lecture and somehow tip the students off to them, while his back was turned! I'm just evil, though. (Challenging to think of a way to keep him from copying all the information, when he was sitting right there in class ... hmm, maybe I should ask the 4th-years for some suggestions!) In my case I would have given him an incomplete set of notes and then hoped I could leave town before he bothered checking them over! An interesting problem.

Too bad that he got caught on a technicality instead (calling you in as a lecturer), since I bet you DID know the material inside and out, and did a great job!

[MrMonk]

23. Picayune technical question

Was the pattern your own original work? If so, it was subject to copyright. Even if it's not, the woman is still a thief.

[knitter4democracy]

24. The pattern wasn't copyrighted.

It's an old pattern that's been floating around for decades. I wish I knew who held the copyright so I could fall on my knees and thank her (and then give her a percentage of my class profits). It's really a cool pattern, but several versions of it are all floating around the knitting world, all free. There is a version for sale, but its copyright is too recent, so apparently someone thought she could type it up and sell it, even though it's not hers. I don't do that. I have a version I put together from three versions I was given with a new variation I wrote up, but I give that out for free.

It was more that it was my class material she stole. I was not contacted about teaching the class, when the owner knew I'd taught it to this woman and all, and I was not given credit during the class until after I complained. In my class, I covered color theory, fiber content and yarn construction, and all sorts of techniques beyond what was in the pattern so as to make things clearer for my students. That was the material she copied down and then passed off as her own research and work.

[PaDem]

19. Was his name Ralph Reed? (nfm)

***

[Lisa]

22. "added the words to make the story better"

That's not just plagiarism -- that's vandalism! Or at the very least, a passive-aggressive attempt at an insult.

[nonconformist]

26. I've had my work stolen as well

Several years ago, I ran a craft site. One day I stumbled across another site that had literally copied and pasted several pages from my site onto her own. The kicker was that she had emailed me a couple of months prior to this to tell me how much she "loved" my site. Even worse was her site was a for profit site, where mine was simply an informational site. I did contact her, several times, asking her to remove my content from her site. She refused. I posted on my site about the incident... but after that happened, I lost my desire to continue my site and closed it down a few months later. You're right - it really, really SUCKS. You feel very violated when someone does something like that to you.

[Guaranteed]

27. I've had a number of people steal "phrasings" that I've made up.

Concepts, really- one-liners. I never mind, though. I'm actually flattered by it.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. I've never had my own stuff plagiarized (that I know of), but I teach some

classes at a state university, and every once in awhile a student turns in a paper that either contains plagiarized work (the style difference is really obvious), or is copied pretty much in its entirety. Of course the college has a plagiarism policy, but I've taken to warning the students at the beginning of the semester that if they copy from another source I'll know it, and they will get no credit for the work. Plagiarized stuff sticks out like a sore thumb; I can tell when something wasn't written by an undergraduate. That warning seems to have helped -- I haven't seen any copied stuff in a couple of semesters. You have to wonder how dumb they think their professors are -- that we couldn't spot blatant plagiarism.