Tuesday, July 20, 2010

On shaving and copying.

In a letter to the Times of India, Dilip D’Souza brings to their attention that an article that had appeared in their Crest edition had borrowed some passages from a book of his and adds:


"Believe me, like every writer out there, I am delighted when I find that other writers have found my work good enough to use in their own writing.

Only, it would be nice if they acknowledge what they use."

I had a very similar experience last Sunday. I was reading an article in the 'Open Page' of The Hindu and found several portions very familiar. Then it struck me that the 'familiar paras' had been lifted from a blogpost  that I had published 3 years back.

I now have clear evidence that my writing is good enough for publication in The Hindu.

8 comments:

Shruthi said...

What cheek! Did you bring it to their notice?

Say what, I see his email there (General manager of a state bank, for goodness' sake). I'll mail him!

Vetrimagal said...

REally! Of all the people a banker!

Atleast he could have ack. your blog..

Shame..

Raj said...

Shruthi, yes, I have written to The Hindu. Let's see how they react.

Vetrimagal: Yes, a banker. Not that it has a bearing.

ramesh said...

haha the banker probably spends his day trolling old blogs to write his stuff .. we should complain to the big bosses that their GM is jobless

Anonymous said...

could it be that you flicked it from him?

Raj said...

Ramesh,let's hope he'll stop with plagiarised articles and not go on to counterfeit notes.

Anon: Possible. 3 years back I may have got into a time machine, come to today, whacked the banker's article and sneaked back to 2007.

Anonymous said...

you bet - that time machine called the internet...and after all, what is this for - credit that you never got? How come you never come up with anything original and mostly quotes or inspired from the day's events

I'd put it on a very strange coincidence. Somebody told me recently that he had thought of Google before Sergey Brin and his friends did.

Well, sorry, first past the post rules generally apply

Why do you have to get so senti over it anyway? you are originally funny ;-(

L

Anonymous said...

yeah I remember your Gillette blog...It means you are good enough to be copied and published in a national daily like the Hindu so congrats!! Ideally they should apologize ...but....
M