Remember the incident not too long ago about a certain someone who had ungraciously plagiarised my writings and used them on her blog without my permission and knowledge?

Well, I managed to wring some sort of apology out of her (after a couple of appeals to her good conscience on her blog), and an explanation too. However, I wasn't really too happy with her perfunctory email actually; it was too glib, with an ostensible air about it.. the way a petty thief apologizes when he is caught red-handed; not because he is sorry that he stole something but sorry because he was caught at it.

Anyway, this was my reply --

Dear XXX XXXXX,

Thank you for replying promptly to my msgs on your tagboard and haloscan via email. I've also noted that you've removed your entry on APM '06.

However, I must dispute your claim that you simply "forgot" to acknowledge the sources you blatantly plagiarized from. I wouldn't mind so much if you copied or quoted from me just a phrase or a sentence, but here, chunks of words and whole paragraphs are directly lifted and shamelessly pasted onto your blog for your friends/ acquaintances/ readers to see. I think you are intelligent enough to know that your readers would immediately assume everything YOU "wrote" on your blog is a product of YOUR mind/brain watever; Since the latter isn't true, common-sense would dictate there is a need to acknowledge your sources in one way or another. Furthermore, I'm sure it has been taught in your tertiary institution that plagiarism is a dishonest and unhonourable means of achieving anything.

I have seen your tag on Hyrul Anuar's blog -- you have unabashedly advertised the APM review on your blog as YOUR own, by suggesting others to read it. And you claim that it simply "slipped your mind" to name your sources??

I do not want to make a mountain out of a molehill, so-to-speak, but I am someone who values integrity and wishes to be taken seriously. I believe you are a person of conscience and would want to resolve this issue as soon as possible -- therefore I recommend that you formally renounce the authenticity of your past entries (which were mostly from my blog) through a separate entry AND either remove the parts of your DIA entry which are written by me OR accredit the entry via a link to my blog.

Being addicted to blogging and possessing the desire for others to appreciate what you've written is not something wrong but there are limits to what one should stoop to in order to increase the readership value of one's blog. On a sidenote, I do not mind if you "plagiarise" frm me again in the future, but please, PLEASE, ensure that your source url is clearly mentioned.

I hope you do not regard my requests as something trivial or get the impression that I'm out to embarrass you in front of your valued readers. My only purpose is to correct an injustice and prevent it from continuing... If you value blogging as much as I do, you would understand.

Regards,

Duan

After that, no word from her at all. And no formal apology. All evidence that the "copying" incident ever happened was removed from her site, including the couple of incriminativing comments I left as tags. This left me to wonder whether the email I sent out above was a tad too callous or tactless for her extremely sensitive sensibilities...

In a recent entry, the aforesaid perpetrator took an extract from another blogger (with the appropriate linky) but one line in her opening paragraph caught my eye; "..hey, dun say I left da entry uncredited..", in bold and enlarged font, no less. That made me smile in wry amusement.

 1:59 AM