Plagiarism

On our trip back from Seattle, surrounded by a bus-full of teenagers, I needed a little respite from the noise that accompanies said teenagers. As I was browsing the Facebook news feed, I came across a note written by a friend that looked interesting. It was about a movie I happen to enjoy quite a bit - in fact, it was the movie my wife and I watched at my apartment on our first real date. Naturally I opened up the note and began reading. But as I read the words she said she'd written almost a year ago on her blog, they seemed strangely familiar. No, not just familiar - they seemed like almost the exact same words I used when writing a blog about this same movie nearly two and a half years ago.

I quickly went to her Facebook page and searched for her blog information. Upon navigating to her blog, I opened my own entry in another window, and compared the two. The words were virtually identical. And what was worse - no mention of my name or my blog anywhere. In fact, she changed a couple things to make it seem as if the words came from her.

I'll admit that by this time, I was a little incensed, but I tried to remain calm. I commented on both her Facebook note and her blog post: "{Name], not to be rude, but I don't appreciate seeing something I wrote being presented as someone else's. Please give credit where it is due, because you essentially copied my blog post from Aug. 6, 2008: http://adamloveskristen.blogspot.com/2008/08/little-manhattan.html"

I received a Facebook message fairly quickly:

"I did not read your blog to begin with, and if I were to copy something I would have referred to your blog, seriously. Sorry, if it looks like yours or whatever. I am not even going into it. You can get offended all you can, I did not copy anything from your blog, otherwise I would have quoted you."

I responded:

"You quoted almost exactly from my blog, with a couple added sentences. I cannot believe you'd blatantly lie like this. I don't care if you quote me. Just admit you're quoting me."

Her reply:

"Well, it is up to you either you believe it or not, I would have referred to your blog if I would have taken it from there. But I am sorry, I did not. I am not one of those people that try to steal someone else's words and put them as their own. You should knot [sic] me better than that."

I thought I did know her better than that - I was her zone leader on the mission, for heaven's sake. By this point, I was quite upset, but I resolved to wait until I could get to a computer the next day. I pulled together a document detailing the blatant plagiarism of my blog and emailed it to her, asking her to either acknowledge she got her material from me, or to take it down.

In two more emails, she again denied copying me, although she did take down the blog and the note, in order to "avoid this drama with [me]." But I ask you, my dear readers, to read the document I sent her HERE and tell me if you think that perhaps she wrote the words she adamantly says she did. Is it perhaps a coincidence, and I'm blowing things out of proportion? In the document, the words that were paraphrased are underlined, the words that are identical are in yellow highlight, and the words that are identical down to the formatting (e.g. parentheses and italics) are in blue highlight.

P.S. Not to sound petty, but English is also not this person's first language, and if someone were to read her other posts, I would think the reader would wonder why the grammar and general writing style of this particular blog were so different from other posts. Just a thought.