Amit Varma writes about an article in TOI about some Americans calling call-center workers in India and harrassing systematically - Remote racism. I can see where those callers are abusive and wrong. Are they racist too as Amit and the article seem to think? I am not so sure of that. We have to understand these are people who have been told that there are these Indian people who are grabbing all their jobs for cheap and leaving them broke economically…Sounds familiar? Oh, just scroll down a bit and the post is right here on my first page.
Liked the post here about Sun imitating Microsoft? Don’t worry - it is copied archived safely here. Don’t know about Canadian Mind Products’ Java Authentication definitions? You are in luck again, since the you will find the exact copy here. Dossy’s “comically ironic” joke? here. Now Running’s review of Raincoat? here.
Did you get the drift yet? No? Well, apparently Rohan Pinto is such an awesome writer that many of us have been plagiarizing his posts even before he wrote them…in an alternate universe, that is. In the real world, he shamelessly copies content from other sites (including comments in some cases - moe and Turiya from the racism post) and puts them on their blog with no attribution or even an indication that it could be written by someone else. Amit found him about 40 hours ago - I sent him an email asking him to remove my post from his blog - haven’t heard from him yet and the post is still there including the plagiarized comments.
See, this is a post as much out of irritation as frustration that he will not take the easy way out that I gave him and quietly remove the plagiarized posts. He had his chance - missed it. I already complained to Google AdSense to revoke his account. Let’s see what happens.
Update: Amit Varma (thanks for catching the guy!) weighs on the matter here.
Final Update: Rohan Pinto called Amit and apologized unconditionally. As far as I am concerned, the issue ends here. Thanks, all those who supported me through this!
Posted by shanti at January 21, 2005 8:40 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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? An announcement from Selective Amnesia
The Bharateeya Blog Mela, due to be held today, has been post-poned due to a technical error. All efforts are underway to set the fault right. Please bear with us (me and my multiple identities (hat tip to Kingsley)). Meanwhile, join us in heaping curs... [Read More]
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? Plagiarism from AspiringBuddha
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? Adamant on copying from Null Pointer
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Tracked on January 22, 2005 10:00 AM
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve left a comment on the entry of mine that he reposted with an URL back to my original entry.
Sometimes, the highest form of flattery IS imitation …
Posted by: Dossy at January 21, 2005 9:47 AM
Dossy, I don’t mind others reposting my content too as long as they mention that I wrote it and link back to the original post.
I found it incredibly bizarre that he would even copy comments on posts.
Posted by: Shanti at January 21, 2005 10:11 AM
Good post, Shanti, more restrained than I would have managed to be. I have also written about it, here">http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2005/01/plagiarism-in-indian-blogosphere.html">here
. The entire Indian blogosphere is with you, and we shall not let this pass.Posted by: amit varma at January 21, 2005 12:12 PM
Thanks, Amit. I agree with your post that most us don’t take this seriously enough. Just because we are putting our thoughts in the public domain, it doesn’t mean someone can simply make them their own without giving credit where it is due.
Posted by: Shanti at January 21, 2005 1:33 PM
As The Thing would say, “it’s clobbering time!”
:evil:
Posted by: MadMan at January 21, 2005 1:53 PM
I think he is going to find out first-hand what it means to piss-off bloggers.
Posted by: Shanti at January 21, 2005 1:58 PM
I checked the earliest post in his archives - from Oct 2003 - and even that has been lifted off from somewhere! This guy has been at it for years. What a freak!
Propz to Amit for his astute observation skills.
Posted by: Pradeep Ravikumar at January 21, 2005 3:25 PM
Wow, Pradeep - that is a little weird. It is amazing how brazen he is to still leave it up with all this brouhaha going on.
Does he really think he can get away from this scot-free?
Posted by: Shanti at January 21, 2005 3:35 PM
sadly, even the technical content seems
borrowed
It is a big leap to make (despite no evidence to the contrary), but I am assuming that nothing on the site suffers from the slightest bit of originality.
Posted by: avinash at January 21, 2005 3:50 PM
Avinash, so far we have found the original posts for atleast 50% of the content. I am just absolutely amazed by the brazenness.
Posted by: Shanti at January 21, 2005 4:00 PM
One of his posts (about the new Apples) seems to have been posted 3 days earlier than it was posted elsewhere.
Thats really funny.. sinister too :tongue3:
Posted by: aNTi at January 21, 2005 4:40 PM
That we was the weirdest thing that I ever read about. Why would someone do that? maybe he should include one more reason under “why I blog?”
Posted by: TOL at January 21, 2005 6:13 PM
To plagiarize in the days of google and getting the treatment from Madman? I wouldn’t do it for a billion dollars.
Posted by: suman at January 22, 2005 7:48 AM
use the power of your CC licence…email Lessig. I bet he will be interested.
Posted by: Patrix at January 22, 2005 1:12 PM
Who is Rohan Pinto? I have
blogged my findings so far.
Pardon the appearance of the blog, while I try to figure out how to do this stuff.
Posted by: mudhal at January 22, 2005 5:14 PM
Patrix, interesting idea though it might seem a little tame compared to what we just found out ;)
Posted by: Shanti at January 22, 2005 6:58 PM