Plagiarism

My blog has been plagiarized several times by college students, and I learned of yet another incident of plagiarism today—in fact, a double incident.

A college student in a Rocky Mountain state recently “borrowed” my August 11, 2009, entry on Barry Strauss’s “The Trojan War: A New History” and submitted it as a term paper.

The student’s professor, knowing the term paper was not the product of the student’s own effort, conducted an online search in an attempt to locate the true source of the student’s paper. The professor’s search led him to my blog, and he submitted a comment, now deleted, asking me whether I wrote the blog entry in question and providing me with an email address to contact him.

In an email response to the professor, I assured him that I, and I alone, had written my blog entry on the Strauss book.

The professor’s response back to me included the following: “Then you should take a look at this: http://enlarykw.lovelyish.com”.

I did so—and there, right before my eyes, was my blog entry on the Strauss book. It had been copied—word for word, start to finish—on the blog of some person claiming to be a Ph.D. candidate currently in the midst of writing his dissertation about Ancient Greece. The Ph.D. candidate’s blog entry copying mine was dated August 17, 2009, six days after my own blog entry. The post even bore the same title as mine.

Amazingly, the person who had copied my blog entry even copied my personal remarks, such as my references to my father as well as my references to our summer vacation.

I guess if one is going to plagiarize, one might as well go whole hog!

I sent an email back to the professor, informing him that the person at http://enlarykw.lovelyish.com had plagiarized me, too.

“Yes, I know, and I thought you should know, too” was his response back to me.

The person blogging at http://enlarykw.lovelyish.com does not accept comments.

I know, because I tried to submit one.

Update Of 15 November 2009: I noticed today that the offending weblog had been closed down for "violations of the website's terms of use".