Stop Plagiarizing Me -- And Anyone Else For That Matter

Dear Anyone Who Cares About Plagiarism -- including perpetrators, victims and everyone else in between:

Earlier this week, I wrote a story about how some Sony employees chimed in on a Twitter-based PS4 anti-DRM campaign in the wake of the confusion surrounding the recently revealed Xbox One’s always-on requirements.

A day after my article went up, I noticed a similar-looking article was picked up by N4G, a video game news site that allows almost anyone to submit articles to them. I clicked on the article, which you can read here. Check out the screenshots below as well.

A few seconds after I started reading it, I realized that Techtandoori writer Rahul Bali blatantly copied my work, which you can read here. Here’s the text in question, which was copied word for word. Note that the images were copied as well.

What’s the smoking gun determining I was the victim of plagiarism? My story was published on May 28, while the thief published his on May 29. Case closed. Now here’s a screenshot of my story.

Notice how my article was published a day earlier and starts off with that same exact text. The same images are also there, which means that Rahul Bali copied both my writing and my images.

Needless to say, I was pissed. And hurt. Mostly pissed.

I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but I quickly sprung into action. First I reached out to the author via Facebook and Google+, asking him why he plagiarized me. No response as of yet.

Then, I took my case to N4G. They swiftly responded with this:

This unfortunate incident of theft has a happy ending, culminating with N4G linking to the original article (mine) and Techtandoori getting banned from submitting links to N4G as well as all sites in the NewsBoiler network. Yay!

Still, this should serve as a warning to anyone in a creative field, writing or otherwise. Always keep an eye out, you never know when the next Techtandoori and Rahul Bali will strike to try to take credit for your work.

This is also a direct warning to anyone else who tries to copy my work: I will find you and I will do everything I can to expose you and ruin you.

Love, Konrad.