Last night I spent the night at my grandma’s and had dinner
with my cousins. We were catching up while hanging out in her bedroom when she,
another online junkie, showed something to me:
A friend of hers (who doesn’t know me at all) shared my
blog! This morning my cousin tweeted me the screenshot:
I have shameless kilig when I find out that I have readers (and accidental readers) pala since my blog’s main purpose is just for me to have something to write on
and share. I find writing very therapeutic and it has always been something
that I am very passionate about. (No, I
did not start a blog just to have a venue to rant on, I have my tried-tested-trusted
friends for that)
Anyway, it sure is nice to know that’s someone’s been
reading. At least I got good news this time, because last semester I was
plagiarized. Below is my entry (that was originally posted in FB notes, so you
can imagine how many scholarly, academic and artist reactants that I got when
they read it.)
Date written: August 20, 2011 @ 2:53pm:
Something quite funny happened this morning. I want to think that it's funny until it happened to me.
A Filipino classmate of mine was presenting his policy paper this morning. It's about the traffic in Los Banos Laguna. It actually sounded familiar because I did a policy paper on that same topic and that same scope and limitations.
The opening of the presentation was quite good, because he greeted everyone in different language translation of "Good Morning" (We have several classmates from all over Asia). He was the only one who was prepared enough to prepare a power point presentation to present his policy paper topic to the class.
After slides, I saw a glimpse of something familiar. I had a similar photo. I immediately told my friend Aya, who's my classmate & seated beside me, that the picture looked really familiar. I have pictures of that same angle in my blog.
In fact, I took a photo of the exact same angle while standing at Robinson's townmall gathering evidence for my data, some while eating at Jollibee then some more when I walked my way home. I remember my friend JLa was with me when I took it, because we had just gone from a mani-pedi session then. The security guard from Robinson's saw me taking photos and asked me to stop. So I did, after 5 more clicks til I get the shot that I want.Then the next slide came. There are encircled things in the pictures. The kind of stuff that I do with MS paint program. I just had to interrupt the reporting and ask.
Kea: Excuse, but where did you get the photos?Classmate Reporter: Oh from the internet.Kea: I see. Because those pictures are from my blog and I did your exact same topic last semester.
I have not had a good proper reaction to surprising things. I almost find it funny, until it happened to me.
What are the chances that the pictures you've taken from the net happens to be owned originally by one of your audience? There was no introduction that the pictures gathered were from the internet. He presented it in a way like it was some data he gathered. If I don't happen to ask where the pictures came from, I doubt if he'll really say that it was from the net.
I understand the borrowing of the pictures, I do the same thing with my blog but I make sure that I have a source where it is linked.
I even have an open note for my blogwalkers:
OPEN NOTE TO BELOVED BLOGWALKERSAll the photos in this blog are not to be used without the permission of the blog owner.Majority of the borrowed photos used in this blog links back to its original source or the blog cited the photo's original owner. If you wish to have your photo taken out of the post, or if you see your own photo that was not credited, please leave a comment in the specific post's comment box so the author edit the post with proper credit. *** If you wish to leave a message for the author, please identify yourself , leave a message, email address & contact number (if necessary) to the specific post's comment box
I had the same incident before when I took photos of the Philippine Azkals in UPLB. Someone sent me a message in my blog saying they borrowed photos from me and cited my blog as source. And I did check if they gave credit and they did.
The Classmate said that he saw the note posted in my site. But he did not mention that he left a message for me to ask permission. So I checked my blog account, there was no message or note left asking for my permission. But it was a good thing that he seemed to be nice (I hope) or else I would have been really bitchy. He did not come off to me as some kind of a douche bag so I let it slide.
Still I don't get it. All photos are from me. Even the idea, the topic, the scope and limitations are same as my paper.
I do not know how to put watermarks back then. This is like the 3rd or 4th time that this happened. So I didn't put one on my photos posted. Now I got a software where I can put watermarks on my pictures all 200 of them (or more) at the same freakin' time. It was just a little tacky compared to the fancy ones my sister does to her pictures on her website. I need time to write and don't have much time to integrate watermarks one by one. So now I'm going to exert extra effort to put it in the middle, yes, it's goin' to be tacky, but what the hell? It's freakin' mine!
It's a good thing our professor is a lawyer, after the presentation we all got a lowdown on Plagiarism.
Accdg to Wikipedia:Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries. The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral andoriginality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement, while in the previous centuries authors and artists were encouraged to "copy the masters as closely as possible" and avoid "unnecessary invention."
While imitation (oh baby it all comes it all forms! trust me!) is the sincerest flattery, it is still terribly annoying.
And all my artist friends KNOW that!
P.S. Here's the blog entry I'm talking about: http://keamistry.blogspot.com/2011/03/traffic-in-los-banos-progress-problem.html
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