Plagiarism & Blog-hackers
By Roopa SreedharGiri & I went to Mauritius in April 2007. It was a very beautiful Island.
After many months, we were traveling to Pandavapura, in Mandya District and took the by-pass road after Mandya for the first time. The scenic beauty of this place took my breath away. I was transported back to the Sugarcane fields of Mauritius once again. Our Mauritian taxi Driver Bijay had 100s of acres of land & had informed us that he cultivated 18 types of sugar. Really?
The Indian Sugar Cane fields were no less mesmerizing than their international family. We saw ahead of us a few small hillocks that seemed to stand on a thick green carpet. Having not read many blogs about this place, we parked our car at the base of the hill and inquired about this place. The next month I wrote the following invite & created our first trek to Kunti Betta.
" About the Place: Kunti Betta is a hillock near Pandavapura in Mandya District. The place is rich in history & heritage. Pandavapura features during the Mahabharata period. It is said the Pandavas ended their exile of 14 years in Pandavapura. Here is where Bheema slayed Bhakasura, the demon. A top Kunti betta, one can see the utensil shaped rocks which were apparently used by Pandavas for cooking. Sugarcane is grown in abundance in the fields around this place, giving it a feel of Mauritius . The multitude of canals passing by the fields gives the location an exotic look. On a sunny day, one can take a dip in any of the well maintained canals.
The Chunchanghatte falls, Melukote and the newly excavated temple of Venugopalaswamy on the Cauvery river basin are very close by. The backwaters of KRS is at a distance of 20 km from here.
One can take a dip in the nearby canal and visit the nearby spot where centuries old Temple is being excavated. - Roopa Sreedhar"
And then I saw a spate of websites copying the original text & populating their pages without mentioning the author's name. More time I spent on their sites, it was enough to point that these sites were museum of stolen text from other websites. Original content from many of my blogs appeared on these sites. They had also stolen from the best travel blogs on the internet of many avid travelers and travel bloggers. I could identify many original blogs of known trekkers.
It is one thing to refer to blogs sites and travel book and plan a travel, and another to create a site based on others travels. But copying from someone's book and publishing the same book again is nothing short of Plagiarism.
Some people I know are very good photographers. How would it feel if their original photographs were taken without permission to create a museum photography site?
Online thieves like this kill creativity.
Cheers to all original bloggers and blogger community!
Roopa Sreedhar
To all blog-hackers: If you don't have the talent to compile & write, go find another hobby. We are not offering our services as Ghost Writers to you blog thieves.
9 comments:
We support u ROOPA..!!!! Go Ahead with FULL FORCE..!!!Block those BLOG Buggers ..!!!
You cannot block them Jags. It is only their ethics that can stop them from stealing. But then if they had ethics, they wouldn't be stealing in the first place. Would they?
When the advent of the www started, we thought it could only be for the best! But here is one of the biggest disadvantages of free and ubiquitous knowledge sharing: people leave their brains in the refrigerators and simply get on the plagiarizing spree!
The only thing we can do is be honest ourselves and encourage originality in ppl around us!
Copy paste culture is what , we see is growing. Less labour ..No need to use brain..& adding to it the originality of the content turns into suspicion...Time to teach them a lesson Roopa. Hackers should know what actual wrong they are doing. Liked it that have raised your voice to criticize them! Best wishes!
this is the only sad thing with humans, u give them some and they use it as its their ancestral property. well we cant blame who did it but certainly its the failure of their parents who were so looser to teach them manners. hope some day they will learn this, God bless them :) and ya roopa keep this good work going ... these thugs don have any talent so let them enjoy their art of copy paste (stealing) and forget thing.
God Bless :)
Hi Roopa
It is done as a matter of routine since many years. Having spent loads of time searching on the net, I keep coming across the same content splashed across multiple search results. People behind it only worry about drawing traffic to their site and have little investment and abilty in content creation.
Now and then I see some blogs protected by http://www.copyscape.com/. Yet to research how it works but check it out.
Cheers
Rahul
Thanks all for your supportive view..
Yeah Rahul, Hopefully we will have stronger laws to protect every aspect of life in our country & globally...
But then its just a hope, isn't it? Right from 2G to Common Wealth Games, IT, power, Land sharks, Underworld, Gangs of petty thieves on streets and internet-thieves, we are reeking and stinking of corruption!
We humans are spreading like Virus, and are spreading mass destruction at the same scale. Sickening!
Its nice that you have voiced it out, otherwise people just sit and let it go, "jane doooo" attitude.
Just block the stealers.
Hi,
I was just looking up some info on Kuntibetta when I came upon the fake content site.
Then I saw this post. I truely agree with you.
Travel blogs must never be plagiarized.
Anyway I enjoyed your writing and decided to follow this blog. Most of the places mentioned by you are awesome. I too aspire to be fully engaged in travel writing soon :)
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