I remember my first experience with plagiarism. When I was in the 5th grade, our class had to write an essay for the D.A.R.E program and as I began writing my first essay, I felt like I couldn’t find the right words to say what I wanted to express. Therefore, I tore up that essay, threw it in the trash, and wrote another one. A week later, the D.A.R.E. coordinator announced the winner of the essay contest and everyone in the class expected to me to be the first place winner but I was actually 2nd place – beat out by one of my closest guy friends.
The D.A.R.E coordinator said that the essay was so good that he wanted my friend to read the essay to the class. My friend was very reluctant to get up in front of the class but eventually there he stood, knees buckling and hands shaking reading the essay in front of everyone. As he began, I felt a peculiar familiarity with his essay like I had heard the words before in my own head before they were on his paper.
A few hours later when my friend should have been extremely happy for winning the contest, he was actually crying uncontrollably. I went to him to comfort him and to ask him what was bothering him. Imagine my shock when he mumbled through all of the crying, “Lisa, I am so sorry! You should’ve won the contest. I went and took your first essay out of the trash can and rewrote it in my own hand writing. I’m so sorry! You can have my movie tickets.”
I was floored but very forgiving especially since my friend had learned his lesson and I was very impressed with his honesty.
Recently, I’ve run into another plagiarism experience. Someone by the name of Rick Amorey has ripped off one of my blog posts titled My First Craft Show http://blog.serahsonline.com/2009/02/my-first-craft-show.html and posted it to several article submission blogs and directories. By doing a Google search on “Rick Amorey cupcake soaps”, you’ll see the multiple sites where he/she has submitted my post as his/her own work.
As I do research to find ways to detect and combat plagiarism, I’ll share my research with you in a series of blog posts in hopes that it will help other bloggers as well.
15 comments:
I remember your first craft show post... why would anyone consider stealing it? It doesn't make sense... it's a personalized entry on your experience. I can't believe someone would be so lazy as to steal someone else's post.
A-mazing! People are truly incredible.
I know! I didn't think that anyone would ever steal it either.
This is so, so strange. Why would someone do something like that?
Out of curiosity, I did a search and nothing came up. So maybe he took it all down?
Wow sorry this happened to you. I had a similar experience and it's horrible that people would do such a thing :o(
I'm sorry this happened to you. As to WHY someone would do this, one of the reasons is to generate content so that people visit their site so they can generate ad revenue from things like Google's Adsense
You see, as a blogger, you risk having people take your content (sometimes literally copying and pasting your articles) and posting them to their own website.
What's worse is that there are TONS of people who do this, so, in fact, 'Rick' might have copied your post, but someone else stole THAT post and put it onto their website.
It's like copying a page off of different books and gluing them all together to make a fake book. And then there are those who also take pages off of the fake book to create fake book #2 and so on.
sorry to hear that!
here is his bio & a list of his "articles"
http://www.articledude.com/articlefr/authordetail.php?autid=16316
Thanks everyone!
Robin, I'll email you the link to some of the articles.
terbearco, thanks for the link to his profile.
So awful!
I know there are ways to turn him in to Google or Yahoo.
I saw an article about how to do that on BlogCoach.org , maybe you can search there.
I hope you have contacted the places he submitted "his" article and pointed out the glaring similarities. I would thing that those places would pull them asap!
Good luck. My husband teaches speech and journalism and runs across things like this too!
OMG, people who plagiarize are on my top list of people who need to get a life! That's just unbelievable!
I read the post you linked to about your first craft show. Your soaps look wonderful and your setup was great! I have my first craft show this Saturday and am so excited!
Hallo Dear!!
I just wanted to say: thank you so much for entering my giveaway!!! ♥
Stay tuned 'cause I will pick the winner soon ;)
With love,
Ale*
That has happened to me before, too - so frustrating!
oh that's a very horrible experience.i fell very sorry about that.
Thanks everyone! I will post a follow-up to it in a few weeks.
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