The Ugly Face Of Plagiarism
Disclaimer: The following discussion may not be 100% Karachi related, but the authors of KMB felt it was too important an issue not to make an exception for. Thank you for your patience, co-operation and understanding.
The Internet is such diverse and easy to use medium it expands our horizons for communication like few other mediums in the history of mankind have. The effect this has had on the publication industry in particular is worth looking at. While on one hand it has given every and anybody a means to become a publisher (it takes less then five minutes to start your own blog), on the other hand, this mass ameuterization of publishing has virtually opened the floodgates for one of the industry’s biggest evils - plagiarism. A few days back here at the Karachi Metroblog it self we joyfully disclosed the newest edition of WeCite, a fairly new and on the face exciting ezine (online magazine for those who’re not familiar with the term), that represented to us, the changing face of journalism. The rise of “new media” as its called. But alas, things weren’t to be this rosy.
One of our readers, Salman, initially pointed us to the possibility of one of their articles being plagiarised, and later confirmed this him self by contacting the original author of the article, who verified the article was indeed copied. The same day, I send a stern email to their editorial team, demanding attribution for two of my images (this and this) that they had used in one of their articles (see this). And despite apologies, both in the comments section here, and via email, which reassured me, that the images would be attributed and re-licensed as necessary “as soon as possible” three days went by and nothing was done.
It was not out of quest for publicity that I demanded proper attribution. Most images on Flickr, from where they lifted my images too, are either all rights reserved, or some rights reserved, under Creative Commons Licenses. The license I used (CC Share-Alike Attribution 2.0) allowed reuse, adapting and distribution, under the condition of proper attribution and re-licensing under the same license under which the image was first uploaded. Any use of the images that does not fulfill this criterion was illegal. It was a matter of principle, and I expected, that an ezine that was seemingly proud of its open-mindedness and liberality, would respect and abide by laws, that it would know better then the ordinary Joe on the street what copyright was and why it was important.
It was this frustration that led me last night to dig deeper into the matter. I initially discovered that the article they had used my images for, was it self an adapted version of an article that appeared in The Hindustan Times, but as I searched more, using Copyscape, a fantastic plagiarism-detecting search engine, the research presented some shocking discoveries. Out of a total of 27 articles published in this month’s issue, at least 11 were plagiarised, either exact copies of other articles on the web, or with major chunks copied from other sources. Vis-a-Vis and Slant Magazine in particular faced the brunt of the copy-attacks, with 5 and 2 of their articles respectively being copied word for word.
Other content was lifted from Rediff News, Blogcritics, and even random blogs of ordinary people, like Jtom’s In The Family House, were not spared. And if you thought it was merely the staff and guest writers that were deceiving and misleading their editorial team, let me tell you that everyone from the editor in chief, to the associate and executive editor, had at least one plagiarised article under their names.
Hastily I send emails to many of the authors whose work had been copied, not surprisingly, some of them are now responding back saying their attempts to get in touch with the magazine staff is resulting in bounced back emails. Indeed much of their website is now becoming inaccessible, with “server upgrade” maintenance messages coming up with apologies. Urooj Zia, fellow Karachi metroblogger and one of the guest writers there, has expressed her disbelief and asked her article to be removed from their website. Urooj’s article was one of only 16 articles in the magazine which was original.
In a society where piracy and copyright infringement are viewed as an acceptable practice, an invariable product of inflation and where leading daily broadsheets, names like Dawn and The News, occasionally don’t mind lifting copyright content from the web and incorporating it in their owns publications without attribution, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that a budding ezine should also resort to such tactics. But it is the extent to which they have plagiarised is what is truly shocking. It shows how deeply ingrained indifference, cheating and dishonesty are in our society.
Below you’ll find a complete list of all their plagiarised articles along with links to the original authors they were copied from. As attempts to get in touch with WeCite keep resulting in futility, I urge you to publicize this issue your self as much as you can. Plagiarism is a hideous crime and it should be not condoned at any level. Perhaps, if we, the readers, show a strong response to it this time, it will send a strong warning to all those out there to guard against it heavily in the future. And whilst you’re at it, don’t forget to check out Copyscape and put some of their banners on your blog or website. And you might as well check if your own content hasn’t been copied by someone else too, in this day and age, you never know.
1. Go Go Go Pakistan - by Head Biter
Copied from: Cricket and the Blue Billion - by Vir Sanghvi, The Hindustan Times
2. SpiderMan 3 Review -By Head Biter
Copies from: Spider-Man 3 -by Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
3. Madonna - Erotica -By Kiran Bokhari
Copied from: Madonna-Erotica -by Sal Cinquemani, Slant Magazine
4. Mullah Power! - by Ayesha Fazli
Copied from: Why The Mullahs Will Win In Pakistan - By Sushant Sareen, Rediff News
5. Tango-The History of Love -By Kiran Bokhari
Copied from: TANGO: The History of Love…for Three Minutes -By Lisa Cigel, Vis-a-Vis, Magazine
6. Underestimating Your Self-worth -by Ayesha Fazli
Copied from: THEN AND NOW: Never Underestimate Your Self Worth -By Neli Lalanne, Vis-a-Vis Magazine
7. Way of the Mommy! -By Sumbal Aziz
Copied from: What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting -By Sala Elise Patterson, Vis-a-Vis Magazine
8. Just Another Blog on the Wall -By Rabia Manzoor
Copied from: Why Most Film and Music Blogs Have No Voice -by Tiffany Leigh, Blogcritics
9. 300: This is Sparta -By Omar Saleem & Miss WeCite
One huge chunk copied from: 300 - the movie - “guy flick” - from a chick’s perspective -By Jtom, In The Family House
10. Those bonds -By Ayesha Fazli
Copied from: FEMALE FELLOWSHIP: A Celebration Of The Bonds That Exist Among Girlfriends -By Sala Elise Patterson, Vis-a-Vis Magazine
11.Till Death Do Us Part: Is monogamy more prevalent than we thing? -By Christina Anderson
Copied from: TILL DEATH OF LOVE DO US PART: Musings On Monogamy, By Shashoua, Vis-a-Vis Magazine
Well done - Zainab - we need to take this across a number of blogs so that WeCite can be held accountable for their actions
Looks like the guys have pulled down the website already - so what a brilliant return to blogging all blown up with a simple post by Zainub which exposed their plagiarism.
I wish Zainub you had take screen grabs before posting this on KMB — ;) but whatever you did an outstanding job researching their shit.
I would like to know the person / people behind it BY NAME so they can also be put to shame (or is that going a little too over board?)
Excellent post, Zainub.
Allow me, if you will, to make a small correction in what you wrote.
You wrote:
“Plagiarism is a hideous crime and it should be condoned at all levels.”
Perhaps you meant to write “it should not be condoned” or maybe “it should be condemned”.
Anon,
Thanks for pointing that out, I wrote this in a real hurry and when the bijli was out, so made quite a few typos, I’ve corrected them. Thanks for pointing them out in any case.
And Teeth,
Yeah, it seems they have realised they the mess they have got them selves into, but just pulling down the website is not enough…they need to first of all accept that they did plagiarise and next of all apologise, to both, the original authours whose work they copied and to their readers. And yeah, I’m in the process of getting screen shots from google cache, and will try and put them up here as soon as possible.
Their hallmark of copying text from other blogs also goes on their blog as well -
WeCite blog post on iPhone is exactly like the one on Mobile Whack
At first I thought that at contrary to their webzine at least they gave credit to the original website BUT a little hunting around on the Mobile Whack website we find the copyright guidelines as
Mobile Whack is Copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the owners of Mobilewhack.com
nice blog
Zainub,
Great job indeed. I had initially requested Bolshevik, the author of this post (http://karachi.metblogs.com/archives/2007/05/wecite_may_2007.phtml) to write up a story and uncover these imitators but she failed to swallow my positive criticism. Bad bad bad…… Then I used the “Suggest A Story” link to voice my concern. Why concern? Because in that ezine (online magazine),
a) They are depicting the wrong image of Pakistan to the internet audience
b) They are encouraging certain aspects that are forbidden in our society
c) They are stealing the whole thing, not just the idea or concept, but the ditto copy and paste, Ctrl-C & Ctrl-V .. :)
I know that being realist is a difficult job but someone’s gotta do it…….. Sorry WECITE..
How about the recent plagiarized post on KMB itself?
http://karachi.metblogs.com/archives/2007/05/new_faster_elev.phtml
is copied from
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/04/30.html
I saw comments from the member editorial board of WeCite in last post, touting the appreciation they have received. Let see what they have to say this time..it seems that WeCite has set new standard by mass copying..
@Jaywalker thats not plagiarism
Zainub, after going through the original wecite
post by Bolshevik (Urooj) and the comments
(espically the responses by Urooj herself), I
feel obligated to once again thank you for
taking the time and making the effort to expose
these shysters.
Moreover, based on the enthusiasm of her defense
of Wecite and her taking umbrage at some of the comments, I have this sinking feeling that Urooj herself may have know about about the plagiarism
or been in on it. Hope I’m wrong.
have known about
Jaywalker,
It is a mere coincidence that the 7 World Trade Center has a similar elevator system as installed in the Habib Bank Plaza building. If you use Copyscape to check either URLs, they will not show that they are copies of each other, they merely cover a similar topic. Plagiarism is different, if you look at the definition provided at Wikipedia here you’ll have a better idea. Please do your research properly before accusing any one of something as serious as plagiarism.
And in Urooj’s defense,
She never condoned plagiarism, she was just erring on the side of caution before accusing someone of it, because it is a serious thing (and as proved by Jaywalker’s accusation it is better to be 100% sure before prematurely labeling someone/something as plagiarism). Also, Urooj did not know about any of this, as I said, she was in state of disbelief, to quote her “For the first time in my life, something that I thought so highly of has disappointed me so frikkin’ much. *heart-broken*”, and of course, she’s never going to be writing for them again.
Lol. Ask them to change their name to WeDontCite. Then its acceptable.
Habib Bank Limited—-PAKISTAN
& 7 WTC in NYC.
………dont use the telephone. Its ‘copying’ Alex G Bell.
-
Ouch!, I wonder if wecite will get “inspired” to do a ’similar’ article for the next issue!.
Gj gettting the data.
Lol. Ask them to change their name to WeDontCite. Then its acceptable
Just nearly fell out of my chair laughing at the
above comment….absolutely hilarious.
looks like you busted those suckers
looks like you busted those suckers there site is down
Zainub,
I liked what you said above in Urooj’s defense. I truly admire and value your sisterhood. I urge men to practice the same spirit :)
http://www.wecite.net/issues/may07/features/go-go-go-pakistan.php
—
WHOLE SITE IS BUSTED - IT IS DOWN - ZR :) what you upto ??
:p I know Jamal, and the funny part is this so called maintenance started around exactly the same time this post went up here, I accessed the website as late as 4:00 PM PST. They have to clarify put the website back up sometime or other…I just can’t wait to see what their response will be.
Some interesting stuff from WeCite’s blog from
last year can be found at:
http://wecite.blogspot.com/2006/02/wecite-team-players-needed.html
An example:
Q. Why WeCite? Why not any other name like ‘Generation X’ or blah blah?
Firstly, the domain name ‘Generation X’ was taken!
We Cite has been derived from ‘We Quote’ … as stated earlier, its main focus will be on stating our opinion on opinions … our writers/authors give their views on the news and happenings as it happens in their respective columns… along with monthly features, and respective blogs that would be maintained by the team members.
From the personal blog of one of the
people behind WeCite…
_____________________________________________
WeCite :: The Revival
January 24th, 2007 at 4:53 pm (News)
It has been quite a while since WeCite E-Zine has seen the light of the day. The ‘Randomly Specific’ team has been pretty busy in their personal lives and while several have moved on or have resorted to a dormant lifestyle, there are some who have still been receiving and pumping their respective contents in to the WeCite Resource Box (WRC), an online storage that now contains material to cover atleast six conducive installments of the E-zine. We’re in no hurry though and our comeback needs to be a defining moment.
Only time will tell.
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http://fauzansohail.wordpress.com/
Zainab — you should be an investigative reporter — well done
one thing tho — dont make unsubstantiated allegations — dawn and the news do not do any such thing and in fact they have strict policies against plagiarism — i have worked in senior editorial positions in both newspapers and have personally blacklisted even otherwise well known columnists (permanently) after we caught them plagiarising (in two instances from their own published articles in the past)
i went on the wecite site and found most of the articles too well written — to me that is usually a give away because it is very rare to find really good writers in pakistan –
The News have been accused in past for lifting contents from internet…
http://karachi.metblogs.com/archives/2007/03/alarm_bells_esc.phtml
I had my doubts and have in fact posted a comment in the introductory thread but it was removed after publishing. It is responsibility of KMB authors that they should check the product/service before recommending it to others.
Btw he writes for isb metblogs too :)
http://islamabad.metblogs.com/profile.phtml?author=743
doctor — that was an unproven allegation — in any case, publishing an article after giving due attribution as to its original source of publication and after taking permission — is not exactly plagiarism — this was pointed out on that thread as well but trust you to bring it up again
Wonderful work, Zainub.
How did you come across copyscape ? Do you know of any free sites that also check plagiarism on pasted text rather than web links ?
Wow! Zainub. Now, that is what I call investigative journalism. Well done…..well done, indeed.
But then, this shows that you have a lot of free time on your hands:-))
IMHO, if you’re writing something online - Be patient enough to let it be copied any where as long as the message is being conveyed (specially if you’re blogging).
As for COPYSCAPE, who really cares dear.
I’m not supporting plagiarism here but the articles posted on MB are licensed to be shared under CC, So if you feel that your article is being re-used You can always ask for Due Credits. Correct me umar and mansoor here …!
Zainab, Chaa gayee yaar tum tu. I just admire n appreciate the efforts you made to expose those guys but I am not surprised. One could expect such thin from that Do takkay ka e-zine. Even Evening Special newspaper would be better than them. So the final score is:
Zainab:1, WeCite:0
I tried to email to kiran@wecite.com, EVEN email address DIDNOT exist!
But then, this shows that you have a lot of free time on your hands
Arsalaan, I think in presence of Google, it’s not difficult at all neither time consuming. Just put the one or two lines in search box and find the results.
WeCite issues and apology on their wordpress blog, I feel that is a good positive move on their part. LINK
Yesterday I had commented on their iPhone post (but its now been deleted - probably due to the off-subject comment) I told them that people will not tolerate a cheater in denial (naturally), the best way forward is to take the blame and move on this process allows the healing to begin and very soon people will forget.
So considering that this was indeed a cool effort on the part of WeCite it should live on, but they will come under a stricter srcuteninzing eye then before - but it should not be hard to over come this minor copy-paste hurdle.
@Asma - MB’s post on Metroblogging are different as I think they are controlled under the CC - but take a look at the WeCite blogs iPhone post made on June 1 - it was copied from Mobile Whack (WeCite has now trimmed that post to now include a summary as well) - they gave full credit BUT when you look at the mobile whack copyright license it is not CC - but a full copyright etc etc.
Bloggers have to be aware of what they can copy. If you copy word for word then it gets serious but if you copy a short paragraph and link back to the site then they generally don’t matter.
A big issue about images being copied around is most definitely an issue I also face and can be guilty of that crime as well - that is the reason I try to keep it as minimal as possible. and keep my fingers crossed
a bit off topic, but if you guys adhere to the CCLA, every page ‘SHOULD’ have a logo informing people of that. (+ the type of license).
CCLA is the way to go IMO.
If you publish anything, isnt the point that it gets the maximum amount of audience?
Blatent plagirsm, like shown above, is wrong,
but as long as they give me credit (via a link), I dont mind if they use any of my shared content.
asma: the problem is not with someone copying the posts, its when they do it 1) without attribution and 2) making profit on fruits of our labour and we dont get anything for it that makes it a problem.
As for Metblogs, if it is attributed, then it is defnitely sharable/reproducible even without express permission from the original author(s).
It is responsibility of KMB authors that they should check the product/service before recommending it to others.
@Kashif: Readers can at least try to use their own brains??A recommendation is a recommendation, It’s not a Compulsion. Maybe you’ll find lots of good things gathered from several places at one place, won’t it make things easier? i.e.., if you’re really interested.
Asma,
I understand what you’re saying, but what WeCite did was different, some of their authors and editors, used content from other places and published it is as their own.
Otherwise, of course I agree, unless your work is also being published for other mainstream media organiasations, bloggers should always license their blogs with Creative Commons licenses, and my own blog is also licensed such. But we must remember that a CC is not a license to forge other people’s content as your own, it is only a means by which using, distributing and adapting other people’s work, becomes possible, through proper attribution and re-licensing.
On a different note,
It is heartening that WeCite have issued an apology, the first step towards learning from your mistakes is admitting that you were wrong. I hope their management is able to put all those behind this to task, and the magazine come out stronger from this adversity. No doubt though, that they’ll be under a much closer eye from now on. But if they can come out of all this and actually become a better magazine, then that would be a big positive, not just for them, but for the entire Pakistani blogosphere as a whole. I actually look forward to reading next month’s issue.
@Zainab - next months issue - I wonder what the lead story might be !!!!! any guesses? lol
Exceptional piece, well done! Plagiarism is rampant in online media. With the advent of blogging and online journalism, the habit of not just quoting but copy/pasting articles without due credit is disturbingly common.
Perhaps, they should change their name to “We cite without due credit”.
but their apology makes no sense — didnt the so-called editor in chief also plagiarise?
@ Qureshi saheb: Yup @ apology doesn’t make any sense. Right now what they’re doing is called “saving face.” They need to realize, however, that there is no face left to save. Like someone said on an orkut community “When there is a pit, the first thing to do is to stop digging.” Or maybe the WeCite admin are taking lessons from our government. : )
@Adnan: “Do takkay ka e-zine”
Now, isn’t that too much :)
I think some of the people in their “management” may still be in denial, which is not what they need. They might actually need a new management altogether. Including, needless to say, a new-editor in chief.
@Zainub: Ed in chief is the owner. You want him to step down? Danday k zaur par?
Kashif,
Where did I say danday ke zor per? But yes, I do think that any ed in chief of any publication should resign if he is clearly found to not only plagiarise him self, but also be found unable to detect so many plagiarised articles that were published in his publication. This is what is called taking responsibility for your actions.
Theirs’ was no professional setup and people have somewhat weak conscience in our part of the world, so I don’t think anybody will be stepping down. There will be denials and more denials.
Supreme court should take suo moto notice of this.
There’s this interesting quote I just read in my archives :
^_^
Find a new meaning to the K in your KMB… how the f**k does this relate to any of the metroblogs and why the hell does the author get to spam it all over the tiny Pakistani Blogsphere and live to tell about it?
Sad.
Phil,
Fair point, this isn’t directly related to Karachi, but the people of this city can relate to it for several reasons, because a)we introduced this ezine when this issue got out in the first place and b)some of the authours that contributed to it are from Karachi and also contribute to this blog. It was cross posted to metroblogs of different cities for the exact same reason, i.e. they had ex-metrobloggers that were part of this ezine too and because they belogned to that city as well. Hope that explains our position. By the way, you know what is really sad? That you had to resort to swearing and abusing to send your point across when you could have easily done the same without swearing.
Zainub, you are one of the best blogger at KMB but honestly this post was not related to Karachi by any means. I also protested at orginal post of Bolshivek where she introduced the magazine. You have to draw line some where because going by your definition, we could end up posting any thing. Just give a thought please. How about we mention in entry that the post does not belong to Karachi but as KMB has many readers so you are using the platform for raising awareness. I guess many people would agree with that but please do not try to defend wrong ideas.
Gr8 work Zainub! You did an amazing job :)
if the point’s been raised, I personally am , not in favour of posting this very post on other Metroblogging blogs. As for Ms. Urooj Zia had a piece in it then she works for Daily Times I guess, you cant print DT here. Announcing its release was not justifiable too, just because you’ve had an article in it - You could’ve cross-posted it or given a link of that :-) It seems as if you’re self-promoting.
It’s been published here is OK, as you want to get out of the close circle of city journalism at times. But then its advisable, IMvHO, to have it posted on your personal blogs rather on such International Platforms.
If you Know what I mean … :-)
@Phil bugoff
@Zainab shabaash mighty girl.
Obi, Phil, Asma and any one else who may also think this is not Karachi related,
I totally take your point, I only went ahead with writing this after consulting the rest of the team, and had it not been the fact that we had not discussed this before, and recommended it, we will not have used this platform, we felt we had some amount of responsibility to tell you guys what these folks were really about. Let me assure you, that I otherwise, take as much care as I can, to keep my posts here perfectly Karachi centric. I know this is not 100% Karachi related, and I concede that, but the consensus we had was that it was too important an issue not to make an exception for. And I agree with Obi’s suggestion, I’ll put at header here clarifying our position on this matter. Hope you’ll all understand. :)
^_^
Thanks Zainub, I appreciate your attitude.
@Bongi: Bongi naa maar. LOL.
@Zainub: I still think you took it a bit to far, just because some reused your pictures that were in the first place not totally your by any means, and the idea for the second one was totally not original, you started a whole crusade and God knows a focused hate circle against a few who were trying their part to come up with something.
Tell me, how many times did any of these star-struck metroblog readers even visit that site to claim it had any importance if they managed to ‘chappa’ articles from the web?
Then, more over, thankfully the best bloggers of this blog site come-up with anti-plagiarism movements and at their best post about how a poor girl was crushed to death and her eye-ball popped out surely sends a good message across the nation, save the world, about the bloggers themselves, save the people of this nation.
Great job!
I have one simple query for Phil.
What follows below is an excerpt from
a post Phil wrote on his personal blog
regarding the WeCite controversy.
“Coming from a land of the originals, we should be knowing a few things, and should understand and accept a few unswallowable realities. But why would anyone need to do that over the internet where ‘most’ of the content posted online is ’shareable’ and ‘reproduce-able’? A land where entire movie scripts are translated, (lost), and reproduced with a different name. Where software and music piracy is killing the local software market and music industry. Where adulterated food items and utilities are killing thousands every day. Where we don’t even know the difference between Czech and check… Yet we have these champions of originality coming out to tell us who’s wrong and who’s not! God! The nerve.”
Even if one were to concede that what you
wrote is in fact true, does that make what
the WeCite team did right? To condone and
accept an action which is morally and
ethically reprehensible is reprehensible
in and of itself.
next time they’d be careful and won’t copy word to word.. instead they’d copy bits and pieces…
“We would also like to thank Karachi Metroblog for the rude but much needed awakening in this regard.”
rude heh?
at one side phil criticizes zainab for having enuff falto time while he himself had enuff spare time to create an entry. Amazing! *grin*
@Phil,
I had so much spare time that I even read your post:
http://philscanvas.blogspot.com/2007/06/as-pathetic-as-it-gets.html
and it was really “As pathetic as it gets!”..
CHORI AUR US PER SEENA ZORI???
C’mon give us a break!!
Next time please use a new alias and come up with something less pathetic.
You suck…..
@kashif: you’re right bro. A country where piracy of CDs nad other thing is not an issue and stealing electricity etc is considered a matter of pride, the thing done by Wecite is not harmful at all. Infact not big infront of things I mentioned above.
@Salman: Thanks for reading my post and quoting it here. Where may I read your thoughts? Or are you not confident enough to share them with us? No, I know, actually they only have two words in it, ’sucks’, and ’sucks’. Well, even if you had A place where you’d scribble thoughts that are hard to come by, you couldn’t mention it with your post, and I am being told to get a new alias! Nice!
@KrAzEe Adnan Bhaijaan: I have all the time in world. I aint the one writing this stuff ‘in a hurry’. Plus, hey, thanks for popularizing my blog :)
@Faisal: The picture is much bigger, probably sloppy wording led you to think I am only concerned with the CD’s I buy, but no. I agree crimes that are reprehensible, are reprehensible, but lets not forget there are proper methods of bringing around justice. If we don’t care about the rules or limits set upon ourselves while doing that, we have no right to correct others. What WeCite ‘team’ did was totally wrong, what is happening on our Blogosphere through these post ALSO wrong, not in spirit, but in method. The author could have asked other bloggers to post the same story on their own personal blogs, instead of reposting on all the three cities we have. We all know what the rules Sean Bonner saab sent to us when we joined MBs. Best regards.
And all the best to the rest of you.
Meanwhile, Adnan, you work on what K means in KMB.
Hi Zainab, great article - I just wanted to point out that Dawn, at least, does not plagiarize. It has reprint agreements with the Observer and several other news services and they pay a fee to use a certain amount of articles from a selection offered to them through the reprint services. I know this for a fact because that’s what we used to do at SPIDER. The other newspapers, though, especially the Daily Times Infotainment section, are definitely copied - from the Daily Mail in London mostly!