Darn It! Write Your Own Content!

I AM MAD AS HELL!

I have seen many of my articles sprouting out in blogs and websites without my permission nor proper attribution to me, as the author of those pieces. I have not taken action against them because I didn’t want to stress myself out running after copycats.

But this time, I am making a stand because I discovered that one of my son’s articles was blatantly plagiarized! The so-called “writer” cut and pasted my son’s article from Manila Bulletin’s Funpage website (the print version came out on Feb. 7, 2009), changed the pronouns from first to third person and posted the whole article as if the "writer" interviewed my boy! There was nothing there to indicate where or how he/she got the story.

View both and compare:

My son's article - http://manilabulletinfunpage.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/value-in-small-things/#more-1023

The plagiarized version - http://www.elliswell.com/10-year-old-kid-give-big-value-to-small-denomination-coins.html

In case the "writer" sees this blog post and deletes his/her entry, I'm also posting some screen captures for good measure. Just click the photos to enlarge and read the contents.

It would have been acceptable if the person just wrote an introduction and then placed a link to the Funpage website to point his/her readers to the article itself. Instead, the pronouns were changed before the original write up was posted almost verbatim.

What’s so ironic is that many of the verbs stayed as they were written from the first person point of view (“Gene Daniel love …” “he already know …”). The “writer” didn’t even check if the grammar was correct!

Sure, my son was put in a good light. But should I be pleased that the story posted about him was actually written by the kid himself?! Any sane parent, I’m sure, would react negatively like I had.

I’m sorry elliswell.com, whoever you are, for exposing you. But you should at least have had the decency to mention your sources and do your own write-ups, not COPY MATERIAL almost word-for-word from a 10 year old boy’s article!

And this goes to all of you who are carelessly stealing (there’s no other word for it, you know) other people’s creativity. Only post content that you have done yourself or mention sources where you got them if they are press releases or articles by other writers!

Go find your own muse so you can proudly and honestly call yourself a real writer. Good grief! Work hard to be worthy of that title!

Edit (Jan 28): Ellis Well has apologized, removed his writeup and changed the whole layout of his site. Read his message to me in the comments section of this blog post.