Plagiarizers & Thieves: Part 2
UPDATE (28/6/2012 @ 1719H)
Dmitri has taken down more of the articles that he lifted from 303 Magazine and again, issued a piss-poor apology with claims that he wasn’t aware of other content he’d stolen (although he chose not to use any word derivative of “theft,” “thievery,” “stealing,” “stolen” or others.) Still, some of our articles still remain.
The saga of the plagiarizers and content thieves continues on…
Shortly before the Jonah Lehrer scandal made its way across news wires everywhere, I discovered that not one, but two websites had lifted articles that I’d written for 303 Magazine and posted them as their own original content. I’ve sat on updating the situation for the last two weeks while waiting to hear back from the legal team with the magazine.
Short version of the story: Despite telling us that the stolen articles were removed and handing us an apology “for the inconvenience,” a sizable chunk of our work remains on their website. Furthermore, both of the websites feature work that’s been lifted from other sites, including the Telegraph, the Washington Post, Grazia, The Guardian, several bloggers and more. How do I know? I googled snippets of the other posts and lo, plagiarism galore.
So now, as Jeremy Duns would put it, I’m left with little choice beyond “naming and shaming” and it’s a doozy.
Fashiontoyou.net is offender 1
Check it:
What about the other stolen articles? Check out this Associated Press article (by way of the Washington Post) original and it’s lifted twin. Or this original from Grazia and the plagiarizer’s copy.
It gets better. A simple web search & whois look-up reveals that the owners of both domains are the same person. “Dmitri Dercacenco” is the individual that responded to our email regarding Fashiontoyou.net. A whois look-up of his name & the email he used brought me to this website, for which he’s listed as the owner. Another plagiarism site? Yep. A gem from The Telegraph and the lifted version. Or this article from Seeking Alpha and it’s stolen counterpart.
The worst of it? This person (if he is who he claims to be) was busted for this two years ago.
There’s more information that a couple of hours of digging revealed, but that’s for another post…
Whether this person is actually named Dmitri Dercacenco is unknown at this point. It’s the name that’s on a lot of these accounts, it’s the name he self-identified with via email to “apologize,” and it’s the name said person used when he busted for plagiarism by the blogger in the last link. That said, the thievery exists and the proof is in the plagiarism.
