I've been following the whole Kristi The Story Plagiarizer thing quite closely, although I managed to stay away from the whole issue. But hey, here's the deal. It happened to me. In a very weird way.
Allow me to explain in details.
Just about an hour ago, I received an email from Kimberly who is a blogger at On The Wings Of Books. She alarmed me about a certain suspicious comment that was posted on her review of The Duff. She said, and I quote, "My blog is On the Wings of Books and this morning I saw a new comment on my review of The Duff. The comment was very... strange, because it didn't feel very comment like and when I clicked on the commenter it took me to some weird zombie website that has nothing to do with books. Since it was so weird I googled the comment and came across your review for The Duff on Amazon and your blog. It matches word for word."
And indeed, as I clicked on the link she provided me with, I saw that she was right.
Here's a snapshot:
This person who posted under the name of Eesti took a part of my review of The Duff, copied it word for word, and used it to attract attention to some weird zombie site called Zombie 4 Modern Days.
If you click on the Eesti there, you'll be taken directly to this site. Clearly one of the clever tricks to get more visitors. But seriously, how lazy can a person be to not bother to write an original comment? If you have nothing to say - don't say it! You have absolutely no right to use my review in any way. ANY WAY.
Here's the snapshot of the part of my review that was copied:
If you click here, you'll be taken to the page where you can read the entire review.
And here's the snapshot of the website that you should avoid. A website that is being promoted by plagiarizing other people's hard work!
Now, I'm well aware of the fact that what happened to me isn't nearly as bad as what happens to people who have their entire work stolen and re-posted somewhere else. But it hurts just as much. It's a slap in the face from someone with no regard of other people's property.
How do I feel about it?
I'm disappointed and enraged.
Disappointed to see people being as low as to even think of something like that.
Enraged that a review written by me to celebrate a wonderful and entertaining book that I very much enjoyed, is now being used to promote someone else's website. Thank you very much, ass-face! Great job! Hope you're really proud of yourself!
Where do I take it from here? I feel that I should definitely do something about it. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who got plagiarized in a similar way, with a similar intent in mind, and whatever happened to me, might have been going on around the web for quite some time. And will most likely not stop unless I do something about it.
So my question is: how do I get this ass-face? I have no idea how to go about it. Honestly, it never even occurred to me that one day I'll be on a hunt for a plagiarizer. Ideas, anyone?
Huge thank you to Kimberly for bringing this situation to my attention. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me about it - without you I would still be in the dark.
FUCK PLAGIARIZERS!
