Plagiarism Sucks!

In August 2008, I created a Hub (that's how they call the articles there) called The Great Spam Recycler. The idea was to recycle some spam mail I got, mix it with rather awful images in the public domain, and turn this into cartoons.

"Do you hate spam?" I asked in the introduction lines. "I love it!"

And I explained I was afraid that in this Hub it was all talking about "Great Pills of Fire" to outwit Mother Nature, to enhance your masculine virility and to get instant satisfaction (or your money back). I will not quote the introduction full length, because I'm not going to plagiarize myself here.

Now, a few weeks ago fellow Hubber Jim Sheng left a spammy comment on my Hub. He asked if I ever tried to recycle spam email. Well, that was precisely what my Hub was all about. Spammy Jim Sheng didn't even bother to read the introduction lines or the title, I thought. But he went on that he came across a blog, dedicated to email spam recycle, and he copy/pasted the link "http://spamrecycle.blogspot.com". The title sounded familiar, so I followed the link and this is what I discovered...

The oldest post of the blogspot dated from Monday, 15 December 2008 and in the "About Me" section I not only found my copy/pasted slogans ("Do you hate spam? I love it" / "Great Pills of Fire"), but also some copy/pasted introduction lines. And all the copy/pasted spam mail was posted by Jim Sheng who spammed the Hub he stole the idea, the concept, the slogan and the introduction lines from, with a link to his own stolen blogspot. Spamming his way through the HubPages, he must have forgotten which Hub he plagiarised a month ago, I guess.

Because there was no other way to contact my Spamming Plagiator, and being a big fan of my work, I became his HubPage Fan. I also send him some fan mail, saying that if he wanted to maintain my work on his spot, he had to give me full credit for using my idea, concept, title, slogan and introduction lines. My Spamming Plagiator didn't approve my fan mail yet.

I heard some terrible stories about stolen identities, lately. If there is an explanation, I sure would like to hear it. But since Jim Sheng didn't answer my mail, I'm afraid this is just a case of suckin' plagiarism.