Blogging Ethics: Plagiarism
Although I fall victim to incessantly quoting and paraphrasing top-blogs for my posts on this site, I have never simply made a “cut/paste” post per se. The justification of my mentality for this sort of blogging is that I’m putting a spin on the articles, and bringing something new to the ostensibly dry sources I use. Regardless of the number of sources I draw upon, I always cite my sources. I occasionally post a fresh review, bringing my interpretation and opinions to your RSS feeder. You can probably tell that one of my pet-peeves is uncited sources. If you don’t cite a source, it’s plagarism. That being said, I was shocked to find my first plagarizer: www.surferdiary.com/games/. They have been ripping off my posts, as well as those of IGNiq.com, Games.net, and Gamepro.net, without permission or citation. I was delighted on one hand, ecstatic that a blog deemed me worthy enough to plagarize, but enraged on the other hand that I was the victim of that which I consider to be an intellectual crime. Heck, I’d take a Black-Hatter over plagiarism any day. But the point of this post is to expose his misconduct.
The next obvious step was contact. So I searched the website, dismayed to find no readily-available method of contact–not even a commentable post. Then I employed a WHOIS excavation program, which yielded some interesting tidbits about the perpetrator in question:
Registrant:
International Web Design Consortium, LLC
6170 W. Lake Mead Blvd
#251
Las Vegas, Nevada 89108
United StatesRegistered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: SURFERDIARY.COM
Created on: 24-Jan-05
Expires on: 24-Jan-06
Last Updated on: 24-Jan-05Administrative Contact:
Darling, Cary cary@internationalwdc.com
International Web Design Consortium, LLC
6170 W. Lake Mead Blvd
#251
Las Vegas, Nevada 89108
United States
(702) 452-4150 Fax —
Technical Contact:
Darling, Cary cary@internationalwdc.com
International Web Design Consortium, LLC
6170 W. Lake Mead Blvd
#251
Las Vegas, Nevada 89108
United States
(702) 452-4150 Fax —Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.PHATSERVERS.COM
NS2.PHATSERVERS.COMCurrent Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
IP Address: 216.17.104.20 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Apache 1
Lock Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Web Site Status: Active
DMOZ no listings
Y! Directory: see listings
Secure: No
E-commerce: No
Traffic Ranking: Not available
Data as of: 21-Oct-2005
So his name is Cary Darling, and he works at the International Web Design Consortium, LLC in Las Vegas, Nevada. It looks like a small business if the technical contact and the admininstrative contact are the same person, but that’s all the better–less loops to jump through. A quick google of “Cary Darling” and “International Web Design Consortium, LLC ” yielded another overly juvenile website that he’s in charge of: www.muckyou.com. With all this in mind, I whipped up an email:
Dear Cary Darling,
The site that you have registered through GoDaddy.com, created on Jan. 24, 2005, namely SurferDiary.com has come to my attention today, being one of a select few websites to stir my ire. Not only have you made it impossible for the general public (myself included) to give feedback on your site via comments, but you have also surreptitiously concealed your email address. If you don’t already realize the grievous error you have committed, it is called plagarism, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as when someone “take[s] and use[s] (the thoughts, writings, inventions, etc. of another person) as one’s own”. Did you see what I just did? I quoted the Oxford English dictionary. Emphasis on quoted. If you can’t detect the sarcasm exuding from this email, perhaps you should see your doctor (assuming you have one) and make sure your head hasn’t caved in. The site that you have blatantly plagarized is www.video-games.elliottback.com, of which I am the primary writer and contributor. I demand that you remove all from your site that I have written, including, but not limited to, the following:
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=707
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=688
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=684
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=685
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=687
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=686
> www.surferdiary.com/games/?p=683These posts mark an egregious violation of copyright law and an adulteration of intellectual property. I can hope nothing more than your compliance.
Yours Truly,
Andrew Back
I’ll admit in retrospect that I overreacted; I was rather pedantic, overusing the ad hominem card. The sad thing is that this post will probably end on his blog.
| This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 12:50 am and is tagged with lake mead blvd, international web design, design consortium, uncited sources, pet peeves, plagarize, plagarism, w lake, interesting tidbits, perpetrator, plagiarism, excavation, vegas nevada, registrant, mentality, feeder, darling, justification, citation, heck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
10 Responses to “Blogging Ethics: Plagiarism”
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Actually, it’s not plagiarism he’s committed, but rather a breach of intellectual property rights. You and I own the rights to the stories on this sight, which cannot be reproduced without our explicit permission in a commercial context like this one.
Techincally, it is plagiarism. He is scraping your RSS feed and reusing your content without attribution, reusing another’s copyrighted material without permission or attribution is the very definition of the word.
Regardless, you did not overreact and, personally, I’d encourage you to take stronger action.
First consider reporting his site to Adsense. He’s making money off of your hard work and you can stop that by clicking the “Ads by Gooooogle” link and then clicking the “Send Google your Thoughts” link at the bottom.
Next, he seems to be hosted on phatservers.net. You can send a DMCA notice to the host, I have a guide to that on my site if you’re interested. I tried to locate the email address for the designated agent, but couldn’t find it. Instead, probably abouse@ or poc@ are the most likely accounts.
If you have any problems, let me know. I’ll gladly help any way that I can. It seems to me that you’ve fallen victim to a splogger though, a good old fashioned scraper.
Hope I can help.
Jonathan Bailey
I took a good look at the website and that person did cited your website in the article at the bottom.
He is simply syndicating your site with RSS. You make it available, and that is the intended purpose, so how can you have a problem with it?
I also see a source link in which he links back to this site. (That’s how I found you
)
I don’t know but Weblogs inc encourages people syndicating their site. It worked out pretty well for them lol
I love when people blast my RSS all over, it gives me better links, and traffic I may not have gotten otherwise.
It’s pretty simple, if you don’t want people syndicating your content don’t make an RSS feed available.
Hey man, you don’t want me syndicating your site via RSS no problem.
I’ll cut it off and go through and dig out all of your posts.
Cary Darling
Not only is your site listed as the source you also have a big link in the contributors section on that site. I come from an entirely different industry but you bloggers sure do get in a huff over things that actually help your website. I checked out this post because I saw your addition to your RSS feed on the “offending site” that says
Copyright © 2005 Video Games. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact ecb29+legal@cornell.edu so we can take legal action immediately.
Overreact much?
Okay, I zapped them all.
I’m sorry I sent you traffic, I’m sorry I helped increase your link pop, but thanks for the feedback on my juvenile site Muckyou.Com
hey Andrew you donk.
You own those celebrity photos you’re profiting on?
http://www.recruiting.com/recruiting/2005/11/another_rip_off.html#comment-11882234
Absolutely hilarious. I love the celeb photos you lifted from the net on your other blog. I guess that’s different than syndicating something from an RSS feed made for syndicating. Nice original content there idiot.
Great guys, insult the man because the network he’s being hosted on uses uncopywrited celebrity photos. First of all, the blogger is Elliott, not Andrew is maintaining the celebrity photos blog, so you are completely and utterly wrong and that point. The least you could do was research the case before you started spouting off nonsense. Secondly, all of those photos are free-domain. And any that are copywrited have links to the original material, and thus satisfy copywrite law. Next time you want to act supercilious, try thinking first. Surprisingly enough, it helps.