Friday, June 24, 2005

My blog identity plagiarized!!!!

Today I was just casually surfing on myblogcafe.com when I chanced upon this little website by so called iraniangurl. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my tag line has been plagiarized by the author of this blogsite.

Exhibit 1

Mine

Here’s my banner at the top of my page with my blog name as “Thousand words: Snapshots of life” and tag line as “A Pictorial journey of my life, the places, people, wonders, sights, sound, smell, feel, atmosphere, radience, culture, and much more”.

Crop02

Exhibit 2

Idiot

And now this doppelganger has turned out of nowhere and came out with “My Photo Novela, Snapshots of Life”. Okay if it was only Snapshots of Life I might have believed it was a freak coincidence that somewhere out there at the exact moment we both had a niggling feeling to put those exact words down as our blog title. But what really takes the cake is the tag line; “A Pictorial journey of my life, the places, people, wonders, sights, sound, smell, feel, atmosphere, radience, culture, and much more”. It is word by word, spelling mistake and error in capitalization so similar that I’ve a better chance of getting him by an asteroid as I drive by in my car than to have two living souls churn out the exact same line and wordings. Note the capitalized second word and also the misspelled ‘radience’, coincidence? NOT!

Crop01

Conclusion

I've been plagiarized!

So I’m really mad, I’m trying to get hold of the blog admin, a certain “Iranian Girl” who has come out with this demeaning crime. My blog has been out there since August 2004 and fully operational since September 2004, and this lady has infringed on my copyright. When I can find out the details to contact her I’m going to give her a piece of my mind and hope she either changes her site contents or get banned from the blog world. For now I’m as mad as a hatter.

Couldn’t find her contact info so here was a letter I posted on her latest post:

Dear Iranian Gurl,

I’ve found your blog and noted the interesting design you have. What caught my eye most was your blog title “My Photo Novela, Snapshots of Life” and also the tagline “A Pictorial journey of my life, the places, people, wonders, sights, sound, smell, feel, atmosphere, radience, culture, and much more”. My name is Kervin the owner of the blog “Thousand words: Snapshots of life” and tag line as “A Pictorial journey of my life, the places, people, wonders, sights, sound, smell, feel, atmosphere, radience, culture, and much more”. I don’t know how you got the same tag as mine and even an almost similar name but my blog has been up and active since 2004. If this is a mistake of plagiarizing my identity please take measures to rectify it, either by changing your blog name and tag or discontinue using it all together. So no hard feeling, I just wanted to point this fact out. I sincerely hope all can be cleared out soon enough.

Yours sincerely,
Kervin Chong

Thousand Words: Snapshots of Life
http://kervinphotos.blogspot.com

Lets see what's her next move is. Bad bad Iranian Gurl!

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

chill.

those words are just "label"

I do not think it is a big deal.
maybe that blogger likes your blog, that is why she copied some of the words.


a blog reader
-Life Feel
www.xanga.com/life_feel

Kervin said...

jeremy: I'm sure I'm very flattered that I'm a small time blogger and being flattered in such a manner. Elements being borrowed such as gif, design and maybe even pictures I can understand but identity theft which I consider this as is blatant disregard. If it was a post I still wouldn't be as mad, but Snapshots of Life is me, it's like having my IC being held by a foreigner.

Life feel: Flattery can go so far, copying and distributing posts is one thing, even people Like Pok Ku got pertrubed when his post on Mojo got distributed without permission. Like I told jeremy, even if it is just labels, it identifies my blog and it's own uniqueness, I'm sure people like Kimberly Cun would be mad if anyone put up their legs as a header in her style. Posts you can acknowledge but identity should not be compromised. Plus if she likes my blog so much she should have informed me before putting up such clear copied text as her own.

Kervin said...

p.s. and it's not just some of the words, it's word by word, phrase by phrase and mistake by mistake. If they had more imagination they could at least have altered it or at the very least give credit. But thanks for trying to calm me down that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, still I think it is serious.

Lai Fong said...

Hi Kervin,

I REALLY liked your blog title and tag when I first stumbled upon your blog. It was not only eloquent but also perfectly apt for the purpose.

May I steal it too?

:=)

Kamigoroshi said...

Damn man...that's certainly a big problem. The only thing you can do is try protect yourself against it by copywriting your works under the creative commons license. But the only problem is, I don't know whether that legal right would stretch all the way down here to Malaysia. The only other thing you can do is get the attention of the blogging community and force that blog to stop publishing your work.

I hope the situation would be resolved fast.

I hate when things like this happen.

Bustaman said...

I feel for you. I have been plagiarized too. I hope the girl replies to your email.
Take care!

Anonymous said...

Get a grip. Getting plagiarised is not the end of the world. If you write something worth plagiarizing, it will get plagiarized! Trust me on this, I deal with it everyday. The important thing is not to write with the fear of getting plagiarised. If you do, your articles may suffer. And we don't want that, do we?

Kervin said...

Tinkerbell: I think your blog title is lovely enough without needing help from me:) Hehe if you use mine then have to be my chi mui XD

Kamigorishi: Nah not looking into legally doing anything about it, just that the act itself made my bile go up for a while. Like some say it's not too big an issue but is still irritating like a mosquito bite you can't shake off. Thanks for the thought.

Bustaman: I don't know whether she still maintains her site, her last entry was round march and not too active a site. Just wanted to let her know how I felt about her actions.

Viewtru: Yeah you're right, it is not the end of the world and frankly after a night's sleep it does not bother me much anymore. Still doesn't mean I'm over being angry at what she did.

Halian: Guess it's more common than I thought, like BBC took a photo of a blogger without giving due credit or even paying for the rights. Just hope the culprits doing it know what they did and their concience suffers!!! Thanks for calming me down :D Cheers.

problogger said...

Oh.. calm down :-)

You two can have a sisters blog kinda things :-D

Malaysian and Iranian ;-)

minishorts said...

To kervin: i understand how you feel.

TO life_feel: you're wrong. plagiarising 'snapshots of life' and 'that entired TAGLINE' is two different things. I don't think kervin should take it as 'flattery'.

need to surf around the blogospheres more, read more, and mix around in the communities to understand how this must feel for Kervin.

lucia said...

i agree with viewtru that this is no big deal. the internet is such a huge place... once in a while, there's bound to be some of your work being plagiarized... esp. minor things like slogan, picture. now if a whole article written by you get plagiarized, i would call that major... and in the world WIDE web, it will happen.

viewtru has a good advice there. plagirization happens. so what? continue to write without fear of plagarizing so that you'll be yourself and your articles won't suffer.

Kervin said...

minishorts, Lucia : You both have valid points. The net is so big that we cannot control nor prevent people from waltzing in and taking something to claim as their own but it is justified to be angry when no credits are given to you whatsoever. Yet the end point is that such things are just down right low, but hey life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you'll get :D Thanks for the words of advise everyone appreciate it.

Kervin said...

mmulibra: Eer I found out her blog site is Malaysian haha Iranian gurl must be a moniker :D

lishun said...

to me, plagiarism is NOT ok. if exams can be failed and people can be sued for plagiarism outside the web, why should it be "not a big deal" here? your letter is polite and terse enough. hope "iranian girl" does something about it. good luck!

Adrian said...

Yawn!! Kervin, you should know better! I guess you better start shelling out USD 50 for your games, and RM 40 for your songs and RM 120 for your DVDs... ;)

Its just a tagline, for heaven's sake! And remember your Copyleft and Creative Commons licence that you so gladly pasted on your sidebar? Please go and read them!

sashi said...

I think you know how I feel about this.

I hope she gets the message.

Kervin said...

lishun: Thanks for the good word:)

Adrian: In a perfect world I guess, still a creative common license does states that the person has to be acknowledged for anything taken, yet she had clearly copied and displayed some elements of my web without prior consent nor acknowledgement.

Sashi: I just want her to understand her actions thats all.

Adrian said...

Well, it IS obvious that she copied it wholesale. Thing is, apart from ethics, did she do any wrong? Can you trademark those loose collection of words as a "works" and therefore subject to copyright laws? Even books, or any other publication allows excerpts and quotes to be taken for use, and most are never quoted.

How many films use the "I'm your father" line? Where did it first come from? Anyone ever got sued because of that?

And how would you claim those words to be your own "work"? You did not invent the words, nor the context in which they are used. And by itself, it does not hold much meaning to be of any economical nor social value. If you photocopy a lousy, worthless piece of art and circulate it around for free, no one will ever claim that you infringed on any copyright.

If you felt it offensive, yes you do have every right to ask her to remove what you deem to be your "works", but sadly, I dont think your case here would make nor serve any purpose.

So there, unless in the very near future your blog gains some sort of multi-million dollar value, your aggravations are not worth even your own time.

Thats the real world, as in your own words. Face it pal.

zona marie said...

omg. she even copied my blog entry.. http://www.midnitelily.com/blog/archives/2004/09/crazy_for_this.html and just changed a couple of words here and there.

no, i don't know her. eesh.

Anonymous said...

This site is a hoax you have all been fooled by Mr Chong here

He is the Iranian girl and created this story for attention

Good job

its very creative of you

I enjoyed it

did everybody else

Kervin said...

To anonymous: There are better ways to attract people than spending time making up a blog and claiming they stole my identity and blog. I bank on original contents and won't resort to cheap tricks to generate traffic. Most likely you're the Iranian girl and is bitter to write such a claim as me making up my own blog. Tough luck.