Monday 9th April 2007

Plagiarised

So some guy has ripped off two of my blog posts. A friend alerted me to this in my comments section on Sunday, and I was shocked. I did a little investigation and found that this "Zaroff" character also has a WordPress blog, and - surprise surprise - my two blog articles are on there too. Without any kind of credit to me.

For your info, he's copied my post about the Seagull Software scam to both his Opera blog and his WordPress blog. And he has also copied my post about SMS fraud to both his Opera blog and his WordPress blog. Shameful. 

I calmed down a bit and thought hey, maybe I should take it easy on him at first. I figured, maybe he is a fan, or maybe he got burned by the Seagull thing and wanted to post the info for more people to read, or maybe he doesn't know plagiarism is wrong.

But all that notwithstanding, he should have stated that he got the content from me. My blog content is governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License, which says that people can display my work anywhere, but must attribute it to me. By not stating that he got the content from me, he falsely purports to have written the content himself.

So I sent him a nice email on Monday the 2nd of April, asking him to explain himself, and remove my content from his Opera blog. Sent it to all three email addresses shown on his About page. As of today, I have still had no reply, so now I'm taking suggestions on how next to proceed.

I figure I have a number of options, ranging from mature to derangingly immature:

  • I could post to his comments section asking him to remove the articles (although I'd have to register as a Opera/WordPress member to do that)…
  • I could post his picture up here (which is on his About page) and ask people to watch out for him in public…
  • One of the email addresses listed on his About page is zaroff.deloitte [at] gmail.com, and he says he is in "CRM & Consulting" in "CMB". I inferred that this may mean that he works for Deloitte & Touche in Colombo, but I couldn't find any listing for a Colombo office on their website. Anyone know anything about Deloitte in Colombo? I could camp outside their offices and wait for him to come out. Or even complain to the management, earning him the scorn of his colleagues…
  • The only comment I could find on his WordPress site referred to him as "Zaff". I could hunt for people with this name. Somehow.
  • There was a comment by sittingnut on his Opera blog. sittingnut, do you know this chap?
  • I think the About photo was taken at the Galle Face Barista, upstairs. I could wait for him there, although that may be a tenuous lead at best…
  • I could hire protesters carrying placards of his photo to hit the streets (although admittedly I am quite broke at the moment)…
  • I could ask the Free Media Movement to denounce this heinous crime on my behalf (like that would achieve anything)…
  • I could copy some content from his blog, in a tit-for-tat revenge attack…
  • I could become a politician and get my goons to beat him up (although this may take some time)…

So what are your ideas, folks? Honestly, I don't mind people taking my content, as long as they say that I wrote it. I don't like the idea of someone else passing of my work as their own. It's just not cricket.

Does anyone actually know this guy? If you could just ask him to reply to my email, that would be great.

Comments:

  1. 1 On April 9th, 2007, sittingnut said:

    sittingnut, do you know this chap?
    no i don’t. i was correcting a very stupid factual error on his part. after stumbling on his opera blog. i think it was on kottu at the time as his wordpress one still is.

    i can very well believe that he can plagiarize , it takes a high level of stupidity to give wrong information about such a public thing as stock market as he did.

    his ‘about page’ gives his email as zaroff.deloitte [at] gmail.com.
    deloitte touche of course is one of the ‘big four’ global accounting firms, though they don’t have much of presence in sri lanka. he gives “Zaroff - Deloitte Touché” as a subtitle in his word press blog.
    but this fellow may be pretending here too, since it is a gmail account.

  2. 2 On April 9th, 2007, sittingnut said:

    SJMS Associates (www.sjmsassociates.lk ) are connected to deloitte touche.
    they may know something.

    btw applying to fmm won’t do as its ‘leaders’ are too are known for plagiarism.

  3. 3 On April 9th, 2007, Anandawardhana said:

    I think you should make a complaint to both Wordpress and Opera administration. I’ve seen hosting companies respond to such complaints by removing the stolen content from there servers. Once images from an artist called Lisa Vollrath(http://www.lisavollrath.com/) were stolen and posed elsewhere and she wrote to the web hosting company and they removed those images.

  4. 4 On April 9th, 2007, Anandawardhana said:

    Even if you haven’t licensed your work and haven’t posted the popular “all rights reserved” line in your blog the you are legally empowered to defend your content. If you can find this person it is even possible to take him to courts

  5. 5 On April 9th, 2007, indi said:

    i removed him from Kottu till this is cleared up

  6. 6 On April 9th, 2007, Dominic said:

    Hey good for you on making this public. Hate guys who steal things. I have an editor of a Sri Lankan newspaper in London who just refuses to pay me for a picture he used. Funny, they run a money changing operation as their main buiness. Will give him a few more weeks to cough up the vast sum of US$60 and will then make it public.

  7. 7 On April 9th, 2007, JL said:

    Interesting… he seems to enjoy ripping people off.

    His other victims seem to include Wikipedia and its sources, Paul Michelman and Michael Wheeler from the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge site. I’m sure they’d appreciate some feedback on how their content is being used.

    And his (mildly ripped off) post, Golden Rules for Living contains the line “If it belongs to someone else and you want to use it, get permission..”. I wonder if he actually reads this stuff before he rips it off.

  8. 8 On April 9th, 2007, Maf said:

    Keep this up. Unfortunately plagarism is not taken nearly seriously enough in Sri Lanka and this is a good way of bringing it to others attention.

    Only consolation I can offer you is that it usually catches up with the inept. About 5 years ago I did an economic assesment of where I thought Sri Lanka may be heading and summarised this into a single slide showing 4 different scenarios. Anyway I forwarded this to a friend whose own info I had used and he subsequently asked to forward this on - which I allowed. Anyway some dick from HNB stockbrokers used it and published it wihtout listing his source and claiming it as his own. I think most people who knew about it derided him for it and he lost a lot of credibility in the marketplace.

    Hope you catch this arse..

  9. 9 On April 9th, 2007, Zaroff said:

    My apologies for any offence towards you or your content. Well, it was just done with good faith, essentially viewed as ‘none-other than’ for a public cause.. That’s how it was given to understand. Nonetheless, for your information, the content has been pulled-out.

    Indi, Thanks for your courtesy mail.
    - Zaroff

  10. 10 On April 9th, 2007, Yo said:

    Apology accepted…

    Thanks to everyone for their support!

  11. 11 On April 13th, 2007, damika said:

    i plagarise all the time.. whats the big deal??? people say things which i agree with and i like the way they say things, chill people

  12. 12 On June 18th, 2007, Ubuntu said:

    y rnt you updating your blog?

  13. 13 On September 22nd, 2007, Yo said:

    Sorry! I have plans to start blogging again, but they’re on hold for a while.

    Dunno when I’ll be back, but I will be. Watch this space…

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