I tried ever so hard to withhold the temptation to post the following rant. Unfortunately, the offending individual continues to do the wrong thing. I’d invite readers to point their attention to http://33rockers.com/. Ignore the fact that the site is - at the time of posting - running a modified 5ThirtyOne V2 theme. The same theme that I have made available for download.
The problem at hand is the fact that Karthik, the site author, has repeatedly scraped content verbatim from this very site [5ThirtyOne], as well as a second site - UNEASYsilence - which I have contributed to for the past two years.
The most recent offense? My post concerning the recently released Shorty self-hosted URL shortening utility: Shorty - Your own TinyURL generator.
My original opening content:
Khoi Vinh recently announced an awesome utility for anyone who frequently passes long URLs out to contacts. The service, known as Shorty, is a self-hosted alternative to URL shortening services like TinyURL or URL123. Shorty is self hosted. This means that any long URLs you pass through the utility will be prefixed with your own domain. [...] Seeing as though Shorty - a self hosted solution - was too enticing to pass-up, I quickly downloaded the latest public beta release for comparison.
Karthik Kastury’s rendition:
Khoi Vinh recently announced an awesome utility for anyone who frequently passes long URLs out to contacts or site visitors. The service, known as Shorty, is a self-hosted alternative to URL shortening services like TinyURL or URL123. Shorty is self hosted. This means that any long URLs you pass through the utility will be prefixed with your own domain and whats more you don’t have to worry about losing your urls if the service a like TinyURl goes down. [...] Seeing as though Shorty - a self hosted solution - was too enticing for me to leave, I quickly downloaded the latest public beta release for comparison.
Obviously Karthik was a little too lazy to copy the entire passage as the near verbatim write-up stops short of <!– more –>
This is not the first offense as I have noticed content being ripped on multiple occasions. Just recently I received an email complete with an appology for content being lifted from UNEASYsilence earlier this week.
So, drop some comment love, drop a few words of disapproval, or express your own feelings about writers who feel the urge to scrape content despite being caught & apologizing.
Technical Contact:
Karthik
5-184 “Ashwin”
5th Main V.P NagarUdupi
Karnataka
576102India
coolkarthik88@gmail.com
+091 0820-2573578
Unfortunately, the standard “send the host an email” has failed to garner any real results. Who knows what other blogs are having their content scraped.
brendan
Aug 29th, 2006
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The joys of being popular and having great content, is those who cannot quite manage to write their own lift from others.
It just wouldn’t be so bad if people at least provided a link to the source, but no, they just have to sell it as their own.
It’s likely not the first time, nor will it be the last.
Poldo
Aug 29th, 2006
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Instead of copying and changing the names of your statement, he could’ve just quoted what you said and provided a link in return. For me, that means, I am giving credit to the original author who made the statement. Howz dat sound, Derek?
Pierre Lourens
Aug 29th, 2006
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In my definition, blogging is supposed to be original. Even copying then linking is wrong–if you find something interesting just put a link to it. That’s called stealing content, and defeats the purpose of blogging, no? These are the same people that are into blogging for the money, for which there is little to spare. It makes me angry because they degrade the whole blogging community, but if we were all original, it’d be a lot easier around here. Lack of content, lack of inspiration, or lack of desire is not a reason to copy content off someone’s blog!
Derek
Aug 29th, 2006
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[quote comment="6033"]Instead of copying and changing the names of your statement, he could’ve just quoted what you said and provided a link in return. For me, that means, I am giving credit to the original author who made the statement. Howz dat sound, Derek?[/quote]
As long as the original text is wrapped in a blockquote and linked back, sure… no problems.
Karthik
Aug 31st, 2006
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I’ll tell you what derek. I had no intention of scrapping your content. It was my asssistant who was doing all this. I know this sounds pretty ridiculous but i am really sorry for that.
Maybe I should give a public apology..
Eli
Sep 15th, 2006
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[quote comment="6153"]I’ll tell you what derek. I had no intention of scrapping your content. It was my asssistant who was doing all this. I know this sounds pretty ridiculous but i am really sorry for that.
Maybe I should give a public apology..[/quote]
I couldn’t pass up on this opportunity … You have an ‘asssistant to scrap (sic)’ content from others’ blogs? Wow, that’s impressive!
kenman
Oct 2nd, 2006
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What’s funny is the notice on 33rockers.com:
“I’ve Been Dugg
My Recent artilce the Ten Commandments of Web Design has been dugg.. Over the 12 hours after being dugg, I’ve recieved an enormous amount of traffic. Unfortunately this has made my server have some load balancing problems.. I would like to thank everyone who dugg my story..
Thank You Everyone..”
I’m sure your “assistant” wrote that as well? Funny that you claim “my story” twice in 1 paragraph.
Get some originality, asshat.
Trackback
Nov 3rd, 2006
What bloggers can learn from plagiarist Karthik Kastury of 33Rockers.com at MaxPower
Ajay D'Souza
Nov 4th, 2006
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I’ve been following the story of Karthik stealing from a lot of blogs and checking his replies in all these places you can clearly make out that he is just lying all over the place.
He said he is shutting it down, but 33rockers is back with everything intact with an post of apology…. interesting!
Derek
Nov 4th, 2006
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[quote comment="12847"]He said he is shutting it down, but 33rockers is back with everything intact with an post of apology…. interesting![/quote]
I don’t think he will ever get the following that he gloats about until he figures out how to spell. His apology post starts out with “I apologise…”