Sometimes, I just wonder about people. Really, I do.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that plagiarism, copyright violations, and piracy of all kinds is rampant in Sri Lanka. It’s sad, really.
Because we know this, we added comments to the writer’s guidelines for C3 magazine indicating that copy and paste is not acceptable, plagiarism is not acceptable, violating someone else’s copyright is not acceptable. We made these comments several times in several different places. We really want this point to stick. Copyright violation is not okay.
Then I edit a game review and I’m impressed by the guy’s writing. Okay, it’s got punctuation problems and a few word usage problems, but, you know, for a Sri Lankan, it’s pretty good, definitely among the best we’ve got for a Sri Lankan writer. I say as much to Fahim.
Then it’s time for his edits. One term in the review came up that he didn’t understand, so he Googled it. And there he stumbled upon the real review. Written not by a Sri Lankan but someone with a fairly generic English-type name. It’s not all the same – the Sri Lankan guy had made some changes in the beginning of the review. But the original still had the same punctuation errors and same word usage errors. Although huge chunks of it were copied word for word. Abso-bloody-lutely word for word.
Because we’re a bit paranoid, what with knowing how bad plagiarism and copyright violations are here, Fahim usually checks for this, but this time, he hadn’t done it yet.
It’s not like this is the first time someone’s submitted plagiarized stuff to us. This would be, what, the, uh, third guy? I think. Our first guy was caught, said he’d never do it again, and did it again anyway. He was blatant. Our second guy was better – copied a bit, but when he was called on it, apologized and has not repeated the transgression since.
We’re not happy. We have a game review that we can’t and won’t use, so now we’re short a game review. We have an author we thought was good but turns out to be a cheat and a liar. And we’re, yeah, a bit pissed off.
Happy day.
