Rant of The Day: Plagiarism & Other Stuff

It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I run across a site, usually a forum, where I'll see one of my stories posted. Not a huge deal, especially if the poster gives me credit, or at the very least, openly identifies the fact that they weren't the author. If they fail to do so, I tend to get a bit red-assed about it, and will openly call out the poster, who, usually, apologizes profusely, blah, blah, I forgive and life goes on.

That brings me to the incident at hand: I visited the TUGS website. Lo and behold I see the beginning first chapter or so of ABK 1 posted under the heading of "Kid Magician".

This time, the poster ignored my attempts to communicate, and so I contacted the site moderator. Pause here to make a point: My opinion is, if you post someone else's story and you don't specify that you aren't the author, that's basically the same thing as claiming it as your own. Others may disagree, but that's my opinion.

So anyway, I PM the mod, a person (I'm assuming it's a dude) named Zanev. He's polite about it, but says that he has no proof that I'm the original author, and would need proof, such as a copyright (!!??!) in order to remove the posts.

Well, first of all, my feelings were a little hurt, `cause I thought everyone in the DiD community knew who The Greyman was, but putting that aside, I was rather taken aback because I'd never had anyone question my word on something like this. In addition, logically, what sense would it make for me to claim a story as my own when it wasn't?

Well, as of this writing he hasn't removed the posts, but he did leave up my post setting things straight so I guess that'll have to do, but I decided to go ahead and re-post ABK. All of it, and in case anyone forgot that bad boy is 25 chapters long, and I don't write small chapters, so it's a big deal.

Coupla other things...

• I just don't get into the Olympics. Never have. I'll watch a little basketball... maybe... but that's about it. Since the original "Dream Team", which I did watch a lot of, I bet I haven't watched 10 minutes of coverage total.
  

• Want to give a shoutout to a named "Doc" who's THE poster of DiD vids on YouTube. This guy rocks, almost always getting the newest foreign stuff up in good quality. Problem is, damned YouTube keeps screwing with him, canceling his accounts and/or putting him on "probation", and he's getting tired of fighting the fight. That, plus not as many people are putting up new stuff too, and it's wearing him down. Let me ask that you guys go online and give the man some encouragement so he'll keep on posting.