Yesterday, someone plagiarized my content and stole my images for use on their site. So hey, probably not a better time to clarify a few things for anyone out there that likes my images/words and are interested in using them on their site.
First, the images which were stolen:
Ok I’ll board first
The Private Room
To the guy who stole my stuff: first off, thanks for reading Andy’s Travel Blog. Second, your theft was unnecessary, your post was already better than mine! You told a wonderful story and had beautiful photography. You’ve removed my images and changed enough of my exact text to the point that you’re probably in the clear legally, but those are still my jokes in your article, and I know that you know that I know. Enjoy the publicity from your post, I hope your wildest dreams come true from it.
Sharing Andy’s Travel Blog pictures
To my non-copyright infringing readers, I said in my post the other day that this blog is yours, and I truly mean it. All images posted here are under a creative commons attribution non-commercial license. What this means is you are 100% free to use my images for non-commercial use when you credit www.andystravelblog.com, so by all means share my pictures, post them to your wall, tweet them, and enjoy them! If you are ever curious about getting some printed, stay tuned, more coming on that front soon.
What if you’re interested in using them on a for-profit website or other commercial use? Please just contact me (the name of this blog at gmail dot com) so we can discuss your idea! I’m happy to work out a licensing arrangement that protects my work and enhances your commercial success.
If you’re ever curious about what constitutes a commercial venture, that’s the perfect time to email me so everything can be clear for everyone.
Sharing Andy’s Travel Blog text
I’m currently the only author that Andy’s Travel Blog has ever had and I own the copyright over all the text and images represented on this site. Please do not post entire paragraphs of text and think that because you changed 2-3 words it’s not plagiarism. While this should come across as common sense, it’s exactly what happened with a story that went incredibly viral and is now on just about any website you can imagine.
If you think something I’ve written is funny (not likely) or particularly informative (hopefully more likely) and would like to share it, the same procedures apply as for images. You are free to use excerpts of text with proper attribution (text courtesy of www.andystravelblog.com) as long as it is for non-commercial purposes. If you’d like to use it on a commercial website, please contact me to discuss.
It all boils down to this: please do not take my work and represent it as your own.
I come across as aloof and handsome, but I take a tremendous amount of pride in my work and spend a sizable amount of time writing, editing, and publishing these posts for everyone. While I hate coming across as stern, I’m legally obligated to defend my copyrighted material and will do so vigorously.
It’s sad that such people exist. I mean, I can understand if someone catches a pic from google not meaning anything bad, but stealing is a no-go.
That’s the worst part of it, he didn’t even need my stuff to have a great article.
I’m not so sure he had a great article. If he stole yours, who knows where the rest of the content came from as well. Unlikely to me that it was all his. He probably stole from several others that didn’t catch it.
Did he remove your pics already? I didn’t see the pic in his original post.
http://dereklow.co/what-its-like-to-fly-the-23000-singapore-airlines-suites-class/
He removed my pictures and most of the 7 instances of outright plagiarism, but 2 of my jokes are still there, just worded differently to avoid legal issues.
If it makes you feel any better, I found your blog via the coverage of this and have been reading it all night. It’s great!
Thanks so much!
I found Andy’s blog this way as well. Silver lining?
I’m embarrassed to say that I shared his post and will be making amends for it and calling him out. What I can’t wrap my mind around is why, as a seemingly educated person who got himself on to an SIA suite, he couldn’t just produce original content!? SO lame.
PS, your blog’s a lot of fun!
Thanks! I can’t speculate on the cause, as it doesn’t make sense to me either. The story has grown out of my reach, but I’m reaching out to news agencies as I see it pop up.
“I come across as aloof and handsome…” I’ve known you for going on three years now, and knowing how friendly and gregarious you can be, I’d say that this is the opposite of who you are…
I tweeted his blog entry because I thought his writing was witty and funny. Then I came upon your blog. Guess whose I’d be following from now onwards?
thanks for sharing… supported you!!
Regards,
http://www.reloadfood.com
I saw the offending post and fortunately the Google overlords posted similar articles about it below-including how it was copied from you.
It must have been an amazing experience to fly like that. I’m too cheap, though!
Now if I were rich…
> Please do not post entire paragraphs of text and think that because you changed 2-3 words it’s not plagiarism
Hahaha, but no. It’s a very Asian (this includes Singapore, the nationality of the guy who plagiarized) thing to do. Some pretend to be ignorant/uninformed, others plagiarize under the pretense of “learning” (see the comments in this article by a big Singaporean news outlet http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/blogger-called-out-for-plagiarism-after-his-review-of-sias-23000-suites-class-goes, that’s the typical mindset that goes on), but no matter what the situation, they always have an excuse at hand for when/if they get caught.
I’ve lived, studied and worked with these types of people before. They’ll copy their report word-for-word from the first result they find on Google, they’ll print out entire Wikipedia articles formatted to their assignment Word document format (some even don’t bother removing the links which get printed in blue ink!) and turn it in. I’m not an English teacher but my first language IS English and I can tell right away. In Asia where the teachers/professors don’t care, it doesn’t make a difference, but it’s a stressful nightmare if you get one of these to work with in an academic setting in the US, Australia, etc – having to tediously and meticulously comb their content for copied stuff, throw it out and re-write those parts (basically doing all their work, because if you tell them to give you content that “isn’t copied from some book/internet”, they’ll go back, grab MORE content from the internet, change a few words and then send it over, and the cycle goes on).
They grow up to become the individuals you now see, grabbing your content, jokes and writing style and attempting to pass it off as their own (this guy did a pretty good job). One of my friends is an expat blogger in the area (she writes about shopping and food), was analyzing her traffic stats one day and long story short, an odd pattern and some Sherlock Holmes detective work, uncovered at least half a dozen locally run food and lifestyle blogs were drawing plenty of inspiration (read: copying) her website and content. At times they weren’t duplicating articles/sentences/jokes, they were still unoriginal as hell by writing about the same topic a few days after (in their own broken English of course)
I can concur that plagiarism is very common in my part of Asia-Korea. I am an English teacher and deal with plagiarism daily.
I don’t understand why some comments have to criticize Asian like this? Some American/Canadian/European students plagiarize on the campus in their countries. Not all the cases are Asian students. Show some respect! The way you commented showed a biased view!
If you were a teacher in Asia, you’d know it was an observation based on experience, not a bias.