Plagiarism

Funny how this topic keeps coming up this week.

Some of the right are using the alleged plagiarism of a college-era paper by one of John Bolton's critics as a sign that the person has no credibility (which to me, is a hoot, since the place where I as a pro writer can make some of my best money - but choose not to do so - is in writing college papers for today's great college students). What one does in college, hopefully, is not terribly representative of who they are as a fully mature adult.

Then I happened to do a search on a link to one of my columns in a newspaper from a couple of years ago and found it had been reproduced around the world, word for word, except for the byline which now bore someone else's name. Apparently, whoever published this (since this is not a single writer's site) again failed to notice that there's a reference to the original author's gender (me, a female) while the person who reproduced by work is male. It's rather a glaring oversight to me but might escape anyone else's notice. And no, this is not the first time this has happened. I've found my work reproduced in Australia several times with someone else's name applied.

In another incident, a fellow blogger - who will go nameless but who has been known to oppose cat blogging - pointed out that one of his posts is now appearing on someone else's blog with no indication it was lifted or quoted from the first blogger.

All of this is the long way around to telling you to check this blog - Becker and Posner - on the issue of plagiarism. Right now, I'm just a bit too crispy fried from anger to respond appropriately. So I think I need to re-read it later when I'm a little less pissy.