Brian Sawyer

Plagiarized Through a Translator?

Here’s something interesting: “Running My Own Race,” by LiveJournal user alexbutlervc* (not his own race, as it turns out):

If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s awfully similar to a post I wrote in January. Yes, that’s me in the picture, and even the links are mine (to my Twitter stream and my MapMyRun.com profile).

Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve had my content plagiarized (though this stung a little more both because it was pretty personal and because I’m actually trying to parlay a version of the content into a different venue), so I wouldn’t even comment on it if it weren’t for the bizarre differences I noticed after my first glance. Take a closer look at that first screenshot, and then look at this one:

If you’re going to plagiarize me (and unless you’re actually trying to pass off my content as your own, there’s really no need, given my liberal Creative Commons license, which basically just asks for attribution and noncommerical use), at least use my own words! I know I’ve never begun a sentence with the phrase “mouth of need.”

Typically, when I’ve seen content from my blog appear elsewhere on the Web, it’s usually been the result of simple cut and paste or some kind of bot, just scraping the content and running with it, but what’s going on here? It’s like my post was run through a translator into another language and then converted back into English. Or something.

But the look of pain in an image is universal and doesn’t require translation:

Now, if I were to see my own likeness warped in the same way in which my words were garbled, well, goodly, most of the fashion, that would be a different narrative.

* No links to provide, because the user has already been disabled and the post has been blocked, within an hour of my complaining to LiveJournal (thanks for the prompt attention, LiveJournal).