Plagiarism is NO JOKE! [UPDATE-1]
I may or may not have been the victim of an April fools joke played by the editors of EGM. No one has been able to confirm or deny that Mushroom Kingdom Hearts is Wii bound. If I have been had then I have to laugh at myself for buying this story hook line and sinker but there is nothing funny about stealing someones works and passing it off as your own.
I was checking digg.com today and I found another story about Mushroom Kingdom Hearts upon clicking the link to the story I was shocked at what I saw. My story about the EGM blurb has been posted word for word by someone named Pinata on www.vgcharts.org.
He used my image, he posted my misspelling of SquEnix, he even submitted the story to digg and received more diggs than me. No link was made to my post and absolutely no credit was given. I contacted vgcharts.org and asked the following questions.
ME - One of your users or contributors has blatantly stolen one of my posts.
My name is Tim Ashdown and I write www.wiirally.com for 451 Press LLC and someone named Pinata has stolen content from my website word for word. No link or credit is given. Any comment?VGCHARTS - Not really, it happens all the time and the contributors are allowed to do
whatever they want - there is an option to cite a source but they
obviously chose not to…ME - So you guys plagiarise people’s work all the time?
VGCHARTS - It’s user - submitted news. Just a blog-style page where people post the latest news stories. I could probably find 4-5 other places that have used your story (by a law of averages) - be flattered.
This leads me to believe that this is common practice at vgcharts.org. Be flattered? Not only is this dishonest and unethical I’m pretty sure it’s illegal too but I’m not a lawyer. 451 Press LLC is now handling the matter I will update all of you with further developments. I know this happens to journalists all the time but this is a first for me and I must say I feel dirty. I used to think that vgcharts.org was a reputable organization but I guess I was wrong.
[UPDATE-1] VGcharts.org has since added a link to Wii Rally to the post. The victory is bitter sweet however the addition of the link comes after the site stole a whole days worth of Digg traffic away from my little site. I really appreciate being ripped off like that. I wonder if they’re going to send me a check for lost revenue too? Or at least apologise.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Wow….people Plagiarizing and April Fool’s joke…this world never ceases to amaze me.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Man I was just as surprised as you. Of all the posts I’ve written they pick this one.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
VG Charts response was totally and completely unprofessional. I can’t believe they said that. Basically it was, screw you our people steal your work.
VGCharts: Just because people do it, doesn’t mean that it’s okay. As soon as you find out a work has been stolen, you should take it down and apologize to the person who wrote it.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Thanks Paul that means alot.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:35 am
That really bites Tim, well at least they credited you after the fact. But that really doesn’t excuse the fact that this was done at all. This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening, I hope somehow you make up the lost traffic/revenue. As usual I’m rootin for ya.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I guess I am gonna be the jerk here, but really man, who cares…. This is the interent you know. There are only 3 things on the interent, Information, Porn, and Piracy. And I have to agree with VGcharts, feel flattered that someone cared about what you said enough to repost it elsewhere.
This happens ALL the time. When every video game site gets a snigglet of info, it spreads like wild fire. Think you have to come to terms with this kind of behavior on the INTERNET, or maybe you should stop posting…. as this may have been the first time, but I gaurentee it wont be the last….
March 7th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I am simply disgusted by what Cofn and others like him have to say about this. Information is not copyrighted, but using your post word for word is illegal and lazy. I say, don’t stop pursuing this. You stick up for writers everywhere when you bring copyright criminals to justice.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Is this a joke?
Seriously you write this as thought you are some high-paid columnist for a national newspaper “it happens to us journalists all the time” - this is a little blog site that you posted a (fairly poorly written by all accounts) story (which was fake) that others picked up on (and which you probably heard about somewhere else), certainly not just VG Charts:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145148 (posted before VG Charts)
http://wheretheresawil.kiwibonga.com/mkh/
http://www.n4g.com/wii/News-27912.aspx
http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=73968
Etc etc.
Also, if you are writing on here with the intention of gaining traffic / revenue then you are doing it for the wrong reasons…
March 7th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Also, sorry to go on, but “stealing traffic away from my little site” - do you know how digg works?
I’ve just done a search for the two articles and
1) Neither got past the first stage so neither really gained any hits or anything else
2) VG Charts story came out well after yours had already been buried so had no impact whatsoever - the fate of your original story had already been decided.
This is very petty
March 7th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
You can tell who the writers are and who aren’t in this thread by the idiotic statements that it’s okay to steal someones work.
.
.
You spend a lot of time and effort on a blog or site or whatever and when you find someone else is stealing your work, it hurts. I don’t care what you write, it sucks when it happens. And just because it happens does not make it right. It is also not right to just accept it when it does happen. THEFT is not flattering.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:09 am
In regards to Cofn, there is a difference between using the same information, and stealing someone’s article word-for-word. What was pulled here was simple copy/pasting fraud. Nothing more.
March 17th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Looks like VGcharts isn’t ready for prime time. If they are going to be taken seriously, they need to get their act together.
Litigation probably is out of the question unless you have the money. One tactic, since they are a content based site, is to write a script that grabs all their sales charts and republish it on your site. That would kill them as that is all they offer. If they come after you for copyright infringement, then you got the same thing right back at them.
Only…i dunno if numbers are protected as creative work anyways. So maybe you can repost that anyways.
I didn’t know that stuff was user submitted either…I thought VGcharts posts it.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
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