Blogging and Plagiarism
The entire Indian blogging world is quite worked up over a guy who has plagiarized contents from their own blogs. They are trying to take collective action against the guy but so far it seems that he is going to ignore them. Here is a link where you can read more about it.
Why does it happen? Why does it seem so easy for people to take credit for work that is not theirs? I think I know the answer. Because they think that they can get away with it.
What exactly can the blogger community, even collectively, do to this guy? Can they take legal action? Hardly. Bad mouth him in their own blogs and hope that he takes his blog down (or write original content)? Hardly.
I am not trying to belittle their efforts. However, I think that collective action will not achieve much against a guy who was shameless enough to do so in the first instance. Here are my thoughts on how to make this guy stop.
The first thing to do is to find out who hosts his site. (PHPWEBHOSTING.com, from Whois records.)
Email this hosting company and complain. Most hosting companies have terms related to copyrighted content and will take some sort of action.
Next, find out what software he uses for blogging. Even though this may not be useful, by complaining to company that makes this software will increase the pressure on him. (www.blogger.com/Google)
Finally, find out where he works and complain to his organization. How does complaining to his boss help? It doesn't directly, but fear of discovery by colleagues can do wonders.
Just some of the suggestions. I have dealt with plagiarism of my technical content (always, I am afraid to say, by an Indian) and luckily, in all cases, the matter was brought to a satisfactory conclusion, because of threat of discovery and legal action.