The Ugly Face of Internet Plagiarism

I posted an article on my blog...and could you believe that one day this comment was posted there by a guy...

``Mr. Ahmad I have published a few excerpts from your article ``The Invisible Men`` on my blog. Hope you will forgive me for this minor copyrights offence.29th of May 2007``

``The Invisible Men`` was published on ``Chowk`` on 17th of April 2007 and according to the footnote on chowk

``Copyright © 1997 - 2006 chowk.com. All rights Reserved
Reproduction of material on any www.chowk.com pages without prior written permissions is strictly prohibited``

any of the works from Chowk can`t be reproduced prior to chowk`s permission ( and of course the writer`s permission )...

This guy had the audacity to comeback to me to tell me that he had copied my work...Needless to say I was not very pleased...

Anyway...one can only hope that people would stop doing this...but its nomore than wishful thinking...

Best Regard
Ahmad Hayat

Z....I find it disgraceful that people copy other writers work and call it their own. I can understand if one seeks inspiration from an exceptionally well written work and formulate an idea to write a piece on those lines to present one`s own unique views, but to simply cut and paste an article shows the intellectual dwarfinism of our prevailing education system that encourages conformist ideology as oppose to original thinking.

This article was long due and you have exposed the names well. I hope that this endeavor sends the right message to the pseudo-intellectual plagiarist community of wanna be writers.

I am intrigued to look into the Karachi metro blog now to read more about your inklings. I am also feeling an urge to write again and post it on chowk...........soon I hope.

Keep up the good work!

Hello Every one, Now we need to tell people how to write, some one here or even chowk team can write some thing about how to write, give some lessons how writers can use other people`s work by giving credit to original writer if they are taking something from somebody.

Since most of us are not being told how to write, that is why this thing happen, second we cannot stop this completely, but one thing which we can do is how to write.

Those lessons of writing has to on top alwasy, or should be shown to people who are interested in writing.

Good article....for some reason, most desis on chowk can`t understand why this is such a big deal....but then they won`t write their own work....

A good public service informatative article.

Good job high lighting intellectual abuse in Pakistan.

Ciao

hey zainub, timely, interesting article, good job publicising this kind of crap.

the first time i encountered plagarism was when i was in class ten at an `elite` karachi school, i noticed an article in our school magazine by an eighth grader which was a word for word copy of a piece i had written for another school`s magazine when i was in class six. pissed off, i fired of a letter to the editor in the next issue pointing out why it was wrong and asking them to ensure it didn`t happen again because from a magazine of their calibre it left `a bad taste in the mouth`. the editors responded with the one liner ``we advise listerine``. plagarism has never been taken seriously, and i hope your article and refusal to take it lying down make others think twice.

the icing on the cake is that the girl who copied my article way back when she was a kid is now a teacher at the school where my kid goes. if my kid stays on that track, one day soon she will be his class teacher, and i`m not sure how i`m going to react to that. or she will. i remember chasing her all around our old school demaning to know how she could copy my work but she kept running away.

Good article Zainab (and I hope not plagiarised!!--only kidding). Seriously intellectual theft is a serious matter. As a victim of plagiarism on the WWW I know what it feels like.

Oh, welcome to Chowk. :-)

The problem with majority-illiterate societies is that such issues are not taken seriously. And in a way with so many other problems such as poverty, health and safety and corruption plagiarism is probably the least of their concerns. Still, wrong is wrong.

One of the worst offenders is Bollywood who blatantly plagiarise--and usually ruin--classic verses from poets of Urdu and don`t even acknowledge it except in rare cases.

The magazine`s plagirists has the copy cat effect :) Can`t produce original, dumbasses.