Internet Plagiarism: Copyright and Copycats

Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Technology is morality neutral. Life made easier with these two command are equally useful for the plagiarists and the copycats.

It is pretty unfortunate and frustrating at times, when one finds that what one has written is getting plagiarised – word for word – or copied without attribution, or some words / sentences are changed and put up as ‘original’.

Over the years, I have seen my writings on my website getting copied. And the worst part is that one cannot do anything meaningful to stop such thing. This is due to the fact that the trans-border legal process is simply not workable. (Owner of Server, Owner of Website, Actual Plagiarist, country of each – all these simply make compliance difficult to pursue).

Moreover, where it comes to ‘law’ and ‘court’, one can be safe that it is going to make hole into ones pocket. Unless the payoffs is in ‘millions’, the legal process is hardly useful.

More than a year back, I found that one of my article on Akbar http://www.i3pep.org/archives/2004/11/12/akbar/ (now at: http://indiapoint.net/ss/2004/11/12/akbar/) had been copied word by word by another website. After searching for who owned the site, I decided to write a letter to the site owner / administrator. The letter was as follows:

Dear Mr. ……

I understand that you are the owner of the website history-of-india.net

I find that your webpage http://www.history-of-india.net/akbar_the_great.htm copies my writing on my website http://www.i3pep.org/archives/2004/11/12/akbar/

I understand that you are a lover of history – so am I (I have an MA in History).

However, please remember that copying/plagiarising any writing/article is a violation of law.

It also means that you have violated the user agreement that is hosted on my site http://www.i3pep.org/archives/2003/09/07/legal-copyright-and-user-agreement/

Please think about the issue.

You are an intelligent internet user – you know coding and have good potential in making good websites (and you also have good sense of design). When you have that skill, why not put it to proper use, whereby you can be proud of your originality.

Just think, that those who write put in similar hardwork into their work. It is simply bewildering when someone finds their hardwork being ‘stolen’.

I hope that you will understand that even internet has certain rules. You just cannot break those by violating copyright. In life you cannot go long way on crutches of someone else. Even, if you apply for some job of web designer – just think what impression it would make on your employer when he finds out that you have put articles which are not your original and that you have violated the copyright law.

I also find that you have put up the website for sale on some fancy $ price. Please remember, any potential buyer would run all those technical tools that would catch that your articles are not original – and even violate the copyright laws. That brings down valuation of your site to cipher – no one pays for stolen works.

(Just think about so many copycats of Amitabh Bachchhan and other film stars – do you think that those copycats have anything close to reputation or money of the original? These copycats only become an element of parody in the long run)

If you want to succeed in life, please dont take shortcuts – please work hard. Its only the hard work that lasts long. Stolen works would neither give you satisfaction, nor give you money – moreover there would be persistent guilt of yourself having violated law, and feelings of people – it only gives you guilt and hurts your reputation.

Given the situation, I would request you to please remove the text on Akbar from your webpage (quoted above) that is a plagiarised copy of my writing.

regards,
Anup Mukherjee
Author & Site Admin i3pep.org

I had not hoped for a reply, but that guy did reply. His reply was short and brief.

Ok… But I will taken this from other site, It may be he copied the content from your site…Anyway I will take off this end of this month… Till then bear to us…..

Thanks

From the reply it was even more clear that the copycat was not even good at writing english! And he even acknowledges that he had copied the content (‘taken this from other site‘) – if not directly from my site – from somewhere else !

But despite the reply the plagiarised copy has not been taken off from that website. The copycat even had the chutzpah to send me a LinkedIn invite !

However, the above mentnioned article is an unedited version of the entry that was published in the Encyclopedia of Leadership (Published by Sage). Fortunately, extract of the enclyclopedia is available in Google Books. The link is: http://books.google.com/books?id=kjLspnsZS4UC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA15&vq=akbar#v=onepage&q=akbar%2C%20anup%20mukherjee&f=true So, that basically proves that it is written by me.

However, some days back I came across certain other websites (at least two of them), that had ‘adapted’ extracts from my article on CA Articleship training (http://indiapoint.net/ca/2006/02/27/articleship/).

The unfortunate thing with this second category of copycats are that they would copy the format of writing, and copy extracts of the article and rearrange words, make a few additions and deletions – and voila – that becomes their original! I would say such copycat perverts are bane to free exchange of information on internet.

I have really found no practical way to deal with such issue, except to take a blind eye to these things – and in extension – to think as if ones writing is getting appreciated – eventhough the other people have preferred to append their name on to it! The only common thread to these plagiarism has been that in each of these cases, the copycat is from India.

I am really reminded of the joke, where, once upon a time, an international collaboration of scientists decided to make a technology demo of their progress in research. So, scientists from America, made a tube that was thinner than the human hair. The Japanese not to be outdone, made a clean tunnel hole in that tube. When it came to Indian scientists they stamped it with ‘Made in India’.

So, sometimes I feel, if that is the still the reality of India even among the educated Indians, then its really shameful. One can easily remember so many scandals, where even PhD researches in India are copied wholesale. The shameful extent is that in an expose some years back, in a university in India, it was found that PhD research copied word to word had helped get six to seven people PhD over a number of years.

And all these for our belonging to a country of Gandhi and Teresa, whose benchmark of truthfulness and honesty is world renowned.

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